DOJ Seeks Resentencing of Kavanaugh’s Tried Killer

The Department of Justice (DOJ) urged an appeals court to revisit the sentencing of Nicholas Roske, the man who attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022.

Roske was sentenced to eight years in prison in October 2025. Prosecutors had requested a 20-year sentence for the 26-year-old, who was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home armed with a handgun, ammunition, and burglary tools.

Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby defended her decision at the time as “proportionate” to the crime, citing Roske’s lack of prior offenses and cooperation with law enforcement.

In its latest filing, the DOJ argued that the sentence was “unreasonably lenient.”

“Roske’s sentence speaks to the nation. An eight-year sentence for an extreme and ideologically motivated assassination attempt aimed at altering the Supreme Court and thwarting its issuance of opinions does not warrant leniency,” the brief says. “It demands a prison term that tells the world that going to the home of a judge or justice to kill him will be severely punished.”

“Even limited to the lens of deterrence, it makes good sense for Congress and the Commission to conclude that all terroristic acts warrant higher sentences. As discussed, acts of terrorism by definition seek to accomplish broader societal objectives through violence, and a harsh punishment is necessary to offset that otherwise skewed scale,” the brief adds. “Multiple circuits have so held, as even the district court acknowledged.”

The DOJ noted that “[r]eimposition of a below-Guidelines sentence by the same judge could be perceived as an effort to save face; if the same judge were to change course, it could be taken as buckling to pressure,” and explained that the “better course is to reassign this case to a new judge on remand who can come to resentencing fresh and make an independent judgment with the benefit of this Court’s guidance.”