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A Florida jury on Tuesday convicted Ryan Wesley Routh of attempting to assassinate then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club last year, a stunning trial that ended in chaos when the defendant stabbed himself in the neck with a pen moments after the verdict was read.
The jury deliberated just two and a half hours before finding Routh guilty on all counts: attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a Secret Service agent, and three separate federal firearms charges. The 59-year-old Hawaii resident now faces life in prison.
Routh, who represented himself during the two-week trial, had argued that no crime occurred because he never fired a shot at Trump. But prosecutors said the evidence was overwhelming, including a handwritten note in which Routh declared: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.”
“This is not a whodunit,” prosecutor Christopher Browne told jurors. “It is not every case where the defendant writes his intent down on a piece of paper.”
The trial unfolded under the supervision of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, who repeatedly clashed with Routh over his courtroom behavior. Cannon cut off his closing arguments after he veered into unrelated rants about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Ukraine, and the founding fathers. Earlier, she scolded him for asking a ballistics expert whether “it takes a special kind of person to be able to take another person’s life.”
Prosecutors called 38 witnesses who testified that Routh had been hiding in shrubbery near the fifth hole of Trump International Golf Club, waiting for Trump to come into his line of fire before a Secret Service agent spotted and subdued him.
Routh, who clashed with his court-appointed attorneys and was granted the right to represent himself in July, called only three witnesses and declined to testify on his own behalf. Two of his witnesses described him as “jolly” and nonviolent.
The dramatic courtroom climax came as Routh learned his fate. Just after Judge Cannon read the jury’s verdict, Routh lunged for a pen and began stabbing himself in the neck, shocking jurors and onlookers. Court officers rushed to restrain him as medics were called. His condition was not immediately released.
The conviction comes amid a climate of heightened political violence. Only days earlier, Trump had spoken at a memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose killing on a Utah campus has fueled national anxieties about political extremism.
Judge Cannon, who previously dismissed charges against Trump in a separate case involving classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, will sentence Routh later this year.
