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(CNN) — A California man pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempting to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, two months before he was set to go on trial for the 2022 murder plot.
Appearing in a federal courtroom in Maryland, Nicholas Roske, 29, entered a guilty plea for the single charge he faces: attempting to assassinate a United States justice. US District Judge Deborah Boardman accepted the plea during the hearing, saying he was “fully capable and competent” of entering it.
Kavanaugh’s name wasn’t said during the hearing, which lasted less than an hour. Boardman referred to the justice only as “Victim 1.”
Roske spoke few words during the proceedings, only addressing the judge to give short answers to a litany of procedural and factual questions she posed. He said he was being treated for a mental illness, including with medication.
Boardman, cautioning that she doesn’t yet know the sentencing guidelines for Roske, noted that prosecutors have estimated his sentencing range as being between 30 years and life in prison.
The judge set Roske’s sentencing hearing for early October. He’ll remain detained while he awaits sentencing.
Roske, armed with a handgun, knife and zip ties, flew across the country and took a taxi to Kavanaugh’s Maryland home late at night in June 2022. He turned around when he saw Kavanaugh’s security detail, court documents say. Roske then spoke to his sister over the phone, and she convinced him to call 911 instead of carrying out the attack.
The arrest sparked mass concern about the Supreme Court justices’ security. Roske allegedly told investigators after his arrest that the assassination attempt was in part motivated by the high court’s draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade and its potential expansion of gun rights.
“I’ve been suicidal for a long time,” Roske told authorities after his arrest, a transcript of the interview shows. “And when I saw that the leaked draft, it made me upset and then it made me want to — I don’t know … I was under the delusion that I could make the world a better place by killing him.”
Roske’s attorneys have said in court filings that when the then-26-year-old was arrested, he was “acutely suicidal, visibly exhausted, and had repeatedly expressed his need for psychiatric care.”
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