The U.S. district court judge who will decide the fate of Ryan Routh — the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump during a golf outing last year — is taking no chances on a violent outburst by the defendant during his trial, which opens on Monday.

“If you make any sudden movements, marshals will take decisive and quick action to respond,” Judge Aileen Cannon warned Routh during a pre-trial hearing this week at which she ruled that he can appear in business attire and question witnesses from a podium.

It is small wonder that Judge Cannon is concerned, given a history of bizarre and unstable behavior by Routh, who will defend himself during the trial at Fort Pierce, Florida. Court-appointed attorneys will be available to step in if needed.

The weirdness continued this week when Routh submitted a clumsily typewritten motion to the court, proposing among other things that his dispute with the president be settled with a life-or-death golf match rather than a trial.

“A round of golf with the racist pig, he wins he can execute me, I win I get his job,” Routh wrote, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Routh also said he would like to subpoena Mr. Trump and asked in his motion to be housed during the trial “in a far off, quiet room” with access to documents, phone, visitation, email, a typewriter, female strippers, and “a putting green so I can work on my putting (a golf joke).”

The prosecution, for its part, has submitted a 33-page list of exhibits that could be presented at the trial, including cellphone messages written in the months before the assassination attempt requesting a “missile launcher” and help in tracking the whereabouts of Mr. Trump’s airplane.

Routh, a North Carolina construction worker, is accused of lying in wait behind a hedge with a SKS-style semiautomatic rifle shortly before Mr. Trump — then a presidential candidate — appeared on the sixth fairway of his West Palm Beach country club on September 15, 2024.

The gunman was spotted by a Secret Service agent who, seeing the weapon aimed at him, fired a shot, causing the suspect to flee. Routh was arrested shortly afterward on Interstate 95, where he wrecked his car, causing injuries to a 6-year-old girl.

If Routh had hoped to find a judge who would share his animus toward President Trump, he ran out of luck when he drew Judge Cannon as the presiding jurist.

Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Mr. Trump in 2020, attracted national attention with her handling of the case in which the Biden administration Department of Justice accused Mr. Trump of mishandling classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

She was widely criticized — and in one case overruled — for a series of decisions seen as favorable to Mr. Trump, and ultimately dismissed the case on the grounds that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, was unconstitutional.

Questions about Routh’s mental stability date long before the assassination attempt. He claimed in a series of 2022 interviews to have attempted to recruit soldiers to fight in the war in Ukraine. But a former volunteer for Ukraine’s International Legion told Newsweek that Routh was “delusional” and a “liar.”

“He sent me a PDF of, like, 6,000 Afghani citizens,” an American who worked for two years with the legion, Evelyn Aschenbrenner, said. “They can’t legally enter Europe. He was combative. He was argumentative. He refused repeatedly to understand basic army policy.”

Routh has also had previous run-ins with the law, including a 2002 traffic stop after which he barricaded himself with an automatic rifle, and a 2010 conviction for possession of more than 100 stolen items ranging from power tools to kayaks and spa tubs.

In next week’s trial, Routh faces up to life in prison on multiple federal charges including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate; assaulting a federal officer; possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence; possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm with the serial number removed.

He also faces state charges including attempted felony murder; attempted first-degree murder, and terrorism, which could bring the death penalty.

Jury selection is expected to take three days, with opening statements scheduled to begin on September 11. The court is allowing four weeks for the trial, but lawyers say they do not expect it to take that long.