Return to court after last week’s shock. This time they did not want to risk: He is masked, almost as if he were wearing a muzzle, and handcuffed, with mittens on his hands, for what it could happen. He is escorted by at least four agents. Deobra Redden has returned to appear before the same judge she attacked in the previous hearing.

He hasn’t been as eloquent as last time. “I am one of those who do not stop trying to do the right thing, no matter how hard it is,” she expressed to him at last week’s hearing, asking for mercy. But this time he has not opened his mouth, not even when Mary Kay Houlthus, the judge in the case, has issued her sentence: up to 4 years in prison.

Holthus wanted to clarify that the assault has not influenced the sentence. “I want to make it clear that I am not changing or modifying the sentence that I was in the process of imposing last week, before it was interrupted by the defendant’s actions,” he said at the hearing.

He plans to prove it in court with the calendar page for that day where, before the attack, he already indicated his verdict. The judge has assured that she “has not changed anything, which indicates the sentence she intended to impose,” because now Redden faces new charges. They accuse him of assassination attempt against a protected official.

According to his family, Redden suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and had not been able to access his medication since November.