It was the Irish author and playwright Oscar Wilde who famously wrote, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life” – a prescient observation considering new details that emerged last week regarding the thwarted assassination attempt of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022.
You’ll remember that it was back on June 8 of that year when Nicholas Roske showed up on the justice’s home street in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Carrying a gun, a knife, and a backpack full of gear, the Californian came intending to kill Justice Kavanaugh.
His motive?
Roske was incensed with the leaked news that a majority of the Supreme Court were planning to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In a court filing released Friday in which prosecutors are seeking a 30 year sentence for the would-be assassin, we read:
“The defendant’s objective — to target and kill judges to seek to alter a court’s ruling — is an abhorrent form of terrorism and strikes at the core of the United States Constitution and our prescribed system of government.”
In the filing, we also read of Roske’s plans to kill other justices. The details are chilling:
In the spring of 2022, the defendant meticulously researched, planned, and attempted to assassinate at least one — but had a stated target of three — sitting judges of the United States Supreme Court. The defendant’s explicit objective was to single-handedly alter the Constitutional order for ideological ends. . . . The defendant’s own words show that the defendant was “shooting for 3” assassinations. Roske researched the Associate Justice [Kavanaugh] extensively, searching approximately 27 times, including by name and the Associate Justice’s home address.
While prosecutors didn’t name the other justices being targeted for assassination, it’s clear that Roske had done his homework:
Roske researched Justice 2 extensively, approximately 16 times, including Justice 2’s home address . . . Roske researched Justice 3 extensively, approximately 10 times, including Justice 3’s home address. . . . On May 28, 2022, Roske searched “justice home.” . . . On June 1, 2022, Roske searched Justice 4 extensively, approximately 9 times, including Justice 4’s home address…On that same day, June 1, 2022, Roske searched, “mark locations on google maps.” . . . Roske also searched, “has a supreme court justice ever been assassinated.” . . . Roske’s Google accounts also contained a saved map with a “modified date” of June 4, 2022, plotting the locations of the four justices’ homes that Roske had researched on a map.
If the horror of an assassin targeting Supreme Court justices in order to swing the ideological makeup sounds all too familiar, you might have read a version of this in John Grisham’s 1992 legal thriller, The Pelican Brief.
In that novel, which was eventually turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, two Supreme Court justices are killed on the same night. It’s all intended to move the court away from its environmental majority in order to help an oil tycoon drill in a protected area populated by tycoons.
Thankfully for Justice Kavanaugh and other justices, any similarity with the fictional movie didn’t go any farther than the initial plot line. The would-be Justice Kavanaugh assassin confessed his plans and was taken into custody. The unevenness and sickness of the individual was further revealed last week when it was announced Roske is now claiming to be a woman.
But the emerging assassin culture that’s been developing in recent years is a haunting reflection of a sickening culture. In this evilness, differences aren’t settled – dissenters are silenced. Whether hatred for Justice Kavanaugh’s legal reasoning, President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, or Charlie Kirk’s temerity of bringing his faith into the public square and public policy, these radicals justify their violence.
Tragically, radicals are trying to normalize violence in exchange for advancing political objectives. The Pelican Brief ends with the conspiracy being exposed. It’s our ongoing prayer that any and all evil and evildoers lurking in society’s shadows will be likewise exposed and thwarted.
