The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death, a jury decided on Wednesday.
Robert Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue - the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.
Members of three congregations had gathered at the synagogue for Sabbath worship and study when Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, carried out the attack.
Two worshippers and five responding police officers were also wounded.
The same federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended on Wednesday that he be put to death for the attack.
He showed little reaction as the sentence was announced, briefly acknowledging his legal team and family as he was led from the courtroom. A judge will formally impose the sentence later.
Jurors were unanimous in finding that Bowers’ attack was motivated by his hatred of Jews, and that he chose Tree of Life for its location in one the largest and most historic Jewish communities in the US so he could “maximise the devastation, amplify the harm of his crimes, and instill fear within the local, national, and international Jewish communities.” They also found that Bowers lacked remorse.
Bowers blasted his way into Tree of Life on October 27, 2018, and killed members of the Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life congregations, which shared the synagogue building.
He opened fire on terrified congregants with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons.
The family of 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, who was killed in the attack, and her daughter, Andrea Wedner, who was shot and wounded, thanked the jurors on Wednesday and said “a measure of justice has been served”.
“Returning a sentence of death is not a decision that comes easy, but we must hold accountable those who wish to commit such terrible acts of antisemitism, hate, and violence,” the family said in a written statement.
Bowers’ lead defence attorney, Judy Clarke, declined to comment.
The verdict came after a lengthy trial in which jurors heard in chilling detail how Bowers reloaded weapons at least twice during the attack, stepped over the bloodied bodies of his victims to look for more people to shoot, and surrendered only when he ran out of ammunition.
In the sentencing phase, grieving family members told the jury about the people Bowers killed — a 97-year-old woman and intellectually disabled brothers among them — and the unrelenting pain of their loss.
Survivors testified about their own lasting pain, both physical and emotional.
Through it all, Bowers showed little reaction to the proceeding that would decide his fate — typically looking down at papers or screens at the defence table — though he could be seen conversing at length with his legal team during breaks.
He even told a psychiatrist that he thought the trial was helping to spread his antisemitic message.
His marks the first federal death sentence imposed during the presidency of Joe Biden, whose 2020 campaign included a pledge to end capital punishment.
Mr Biden’s Justice Department has placed a moratorium on federal executions and has declined to authorise the death penalty in hundreds of new cases where it could apply.
But federal prosecutors said death was the appropriate punishment for Bowers, citing the vulnerability of his mainly elderly victims and his hate-based targeting of a religious community.
Most victims’ families, but not all, said Bowers should die for his crimes.
“Many of our members prefer that the shooter spend the rest of his life in prison, questioning whether we should seek vengeance or revenge against him or whether his death would ‘make up’ for the lost lives,” according to a statement from Stephen Cohen and Barbara Caplan, co-presidents of New Light Congregation, which lost three members of the attack.
But the congregation as a whole, they wrote, “agrees with the government’s position that no one may murder innocent individuals simply because of their religion...New Light Congregation accepts the jury’s decision and believes that, as a society, we need to take a stand that this act requires the ultimate penalty under the law.”
Bowers’ lawyers never contested his guilt, focusing their efforts on trying to save his life.
They presented evidence of a horrific childhood marked by trauma and neglect. They also claimed Bowers had severe, untreated mental illness, saying he killed out of a delusional belief that Jews were helping to cause a genocide of white people.
But the prosecution denied mental illness had anything to do with it, and the jury sided with this argument.
The deceased victims, in addition to Mrs Mallinger, were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Younger, 69.
