The plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was as bizarre as it was terrifying.
From her home in California, 26-year-old Sophie Roske figured out Kavanaugh’s address in suburban Maryland. She bought a gun, practiced shooting and acquired lock-picking tools, black face paint and a laser sight. After packing her gear into a suitcase she checked at the airport, Roske flew cross-country and took a cab to the justice’s home, arriving just after 1 a.m.
Exactly what prompted Roske’s next decision — not to proceed with her plan — has long driven debate over how many years she should spend in prison. And it remains central to a new chapter in the case: The Justice Department’s effort to keep her behind bars much longer.
On their first try, last October, Justice Department officials sought at least 30 years but a judge handed down eight. “Woefully insufficient,” they said afterward.
Their opening brief — a written argument that typically challenges whether the sentencing judge followed proper procedures, abused their discretion, or both — is due Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Experts in federal criminal law say prosecutors have legitimate arguments but face the broad discretion typically afforded sentencing judges.
Roske’s plan took shape over several weeks in 2022. She was arrested blocks from the Kavanaugh’s home and later pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court justice. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman handed down the original sentence on Oct. 3 during a six-hour hearing, including two hours she spent explaining her reasoning.
“She was very conscious in building the record in explaining what she was doing,” said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and author of the widely cited blog Sentencing Law and Policy, one of four experts who, at The Post’s request, reviewed a transcript of Boardman’s findings and the arguments presented by both sides.
Berman expects the Justice Department attorneys to focus on the moment Roske abandoned her attack plan and emphasize earlier arguments: It was only the presence of two deputy U.S. marshals outside Kavanaugh’s house that prompted Roske to walk away.
“If the coast was clear,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Coreen Mao said in court last year, “the defendant would have proceeded to break in and shoot the associate justice.”
Roske and her attorneys have offered a different explanation. During the cab ride, they say, Roske began second-guessing herself. When she arrived, she suddenly found herself in a neighborhood of real people, including her intended target, and the prospect of murder no longer seemed abstract.
“My whole perspective shifted,” Roske wrote in a letter to the judge.
Boardman questioned and analyzed both arguments but ultimately sided with Roske’s.
“Law enforcement presence may have moved the needle for her, but there is insufficient evidence before me that the presence of law enforcement was the only reason she abandoned her plans,” Boardman said. “We simply do not know what would have happened if the marshals had not been there.”
Once the judge reached that conclusion, Roske’s conduct after walking several blocks away — and not being followed by the marshals — worked in her favor. She could have quietly returned to California. Instead, she called the police and told them why she’d come to Maryland. “If she had not called 911,” the judge said, “law enforcement never would have known about Sophie Roske and her plot to kill a Supreme Court justice.”
As investigators pieced together the extent of all her plotting and traveling, they established “substantial steps” taken by Rosketo support the attempted assassination charge — even if Roske never broke in or fired her gun.
Justice Department attorneys, the experts say, will likely seize upon portions of Boardman’s findings that support their own arguments, including her description of Roske’s crime as an act of “attempted direct domestic terrorism.” Those actions, when viewed through the technical calculations of federal sentencing guidelines, exposed Roske to a “terrorism enhancement” that yielded a suggested total punishment of 30 years to life in prison, according to Boardman and attorneys in the case.
But sentencing guidelines aren’t mandatory. And after reviewing decades of old Sentencing Commission and congressional records, as Boardman told the courtroom, the judge stressed that the terrorism enhancement appears to have never been intended to apply equally across all terrorism cases.
“She went into incredible details to show that her variances from the guidelines were well-founded for a variety of reasons,” said Robert Bonsib, a former federal prosecutor and longtime defense attorney.
Boardman also said that eight years represented a substantial punishment for someone with no prior criminal record, not even a traffic citation. And it would serve as a deterrent, she said.
“Let me be crystal-clear so nobody misunderstands me,” Boardman told the courtroom. “What Sophie Roske did, devising and nearly executing a plan to kill a Supreme Court justice in an attempt to change a Supreme Court ruling and the composition of the court is absolutely reprehensible.”
“A message needs to be sent to people who are considering harming judges,” the judge added.
Prosecutors, however, are likely to argue that the conduct demands a louder message. Anything less than 15 years, Mao argued last year, creates a risk-worthy proposition.
“This wasn’t some person getting picked up after writing a threatening email to a friend,” Berman said. “As a matter of basic policy, the Justice Department could argue you want a longer sentence to make sure people abandon this kind of plan a lot earlier.”
The breadth of Boardman’s analysis — covering Roske’s childhood, her mental health struggles, the origins of the terrorism enhancement and the many steps she took toward the attack — gives appellate attorneys plenty to scrutinize.
Roske was named Nicholas Roske at birth and raised as a boy in a Southern California family active in a large Evangelical church. (Roske was identified by her name at birth in earlier coverage of the case.) Roske reached the rank of Eagle Scout, earned a philosophy degree Cal State Northridge and began to transition to a woman. “Sophie’s depression remained unresolved at least in part due to her gender dysphoria, which was not being addressed by her treatment,” Boardman said from the bench.
She withdrew from her family and turned increasingly to people online as her thoughts darkened, records show.
“I only have violent thoughts towards people I feel are bad,” Roske wrote in a March 18, 2022, Discord message. “I could never just hurt a random person or someone I thought didn’t deserve it.”
Roske mixed in political frustrations, vowing to stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned.
“What u tryna do” a Discord user asked.
“Remove some people from the supreme court,” Roske wrote back. “I could get at least one, which would change the votes for decades to come, and I am shooting for 3.”
By then, Boardman noted, Roske had already ordered a Glock 17 handgun. Other purchases included tactical gloves, pepper spray, ammunition and a one-way flight to Dulles International Airport.
“They will put that conduct front-and-center,” said Anatoly Smolkin, an appellate litigator in Baltimore and former federal prosecutor. “They’ll say, ‘But for the presence of law enforcement, we’d be talking about an assassinated Supreme Court justice.’”
Justice attorneys are expected to challenge Boardman’s decision to essentially dispense with the terrorism enhancement. To Boardman, Roske’s actions didn’t track many other terrorism defendants, and Roske should benefit from her lack of past criminal history.
“Ms. Roske acted alone, was not part of any terrorist organization, did not have a manifesto, and ultimately decided against committing violence and self-reported,” Boardman said.
Other points covered by Boardman included Roske’s mental state and, to a lesser extent, her gender identity.
On the latter point, Boardman said that in weighing how long to sentence Roske, she factored in that Roske could face additional hardships in federal custody owing to assignment to a male prison and uncertainty about access to hormone treatment. Experts, however, said those considerations appeared secondary to the judge’s findings about the terrorism enhancement, abandonment and Roske’s mental health challenges.
“My view is that it had a limited effect on the final outcome,” said Richard Finci, a longtime federal and state defense lawyer. “It’s not as if Judge Boardman let her walk because she is transgender.”
On the night Roske approached Kavanaugh’s home, the judge said, Roske “was in the throes of a mental health crisis.”
The judge emphasized that since her arrest that night and subsequent detention, Roske has shown a strong commitment to mental health treatment. Boardman found that Roske fully understands the gravity of her actions and, coupled with close supervision after release, no longer poses a danger.
Prosecutors have argued otherwise. Experts expect them to revisit evidence indicating Roske carefully considered what would happen after the shooting.
“Roske exhibited full awareness of the significance and consequences of Roske’s assassination plan, and preemptively researched potential escapes and defenses,” prosecutors wrote in court filings last year. “On May 18-19, 2022, Roske searched for ‘Countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.,’ ‘Does Iceland extradite to the U.S.,’ and ‘Does Sweden extradite to the U.S.’”
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