A gunman who entered a Pittsburgh synagogue almost 5 years in the past and killed 11 folks within the worst antisemitic assault in U.S. historical past must be sentenced to loss of life, a jury stated on Wednesday.
Robert Bowers, a truck driver, spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs on-line earlier than methodically planning and finishing up the Oct. 27, 2018, bloodbath on the Tree of Life synagogue, the place members of three congregations had gathered for Sabbath worship and examine.
Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, P.A., was armed with an AR-15 rifle and different weapons. He additionally wounded two worshippers and 5 responding law enforcement officials.
The congregants killed within the assault ranged in age from 54 to 97 and have been from the Dor Hadash, New Gentle and Tree of Life congregations, which all shared the synagogue constructing. They have been: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Dan Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Youthful.
In closing arguments on Monday, prosecutors stated the 50-year-old Bowers was clearly motivated by non secular hatred and after the assault expressed delight within the killings. Earlier than the assaults, he unfold vitriol over immigrants and antisemitic content material on Gab, a social media platform in style with the far proper.
Uncommon federal loss of life penalty sentence
Bowers’s legal professionals requested jurors to spare his life, asserting that he acted out of a delusional perception that Jewish folks have been serving to to carry a couple of genocide of white folks. They stated he has extreme psychological sickness and endured a troublesome childhood.
The decision got here after a prolonged trial by which jurors heard in chilling element how Bowers reloaded at the least twice, stepped over the bloodied our bodies of his victims to search for extra folks to shoot and surrendered solely when he ran out of ammunition.
Within the sentencing section, grieving relations informed the jury in regards to the lives that Bowers took — a 97-year-old girl and intellectually disabled brothers amongst them — and the unrelenting ache of their loss. Survivors testified about their very own lasting ache, each bodily and emotional.
It was the primary federal loss of life sentence imposed throughout the presidency of Joe Biden, whose 2020 marketing campaign included a pledge to finish capital punishment.
His lawyer normal, Merrick Garland, has briefly paused executions to evaluate insurance policies and procedures, however federal prosecutors proceed to vigorously work to uphold loss of life sentences which have been issued and, in some instances, to pursue new loss of life sentences at trial.
The mass shooter at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022 is being prosecuted for federal hate crime fees, which might probably carry a loss of life penalty sentence.