On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 individuals who had gathered to worship, the deadliest antisemitic assault within the nation’s historical past. On Monday, greater than 4 years later, the trial of the person accused of the bloodbath will start with jury choice.
The trial will happen in two phases, the primary regarding guilt and the second on the penalty. As the info surrounding the taking pictures are largely undisputed, it’s going to successfully be a monthslong tribunal about whether or not the defendant, Robert Bowers, 50, needs to be executed. His attorneys have provided to resolve the case with a responsible plea on all counts in alternate for all times in jail with out the potential for launch, however federal prosecutors have rejected these provides.
Trials for mass shooters are comparatively uncommon, on condition that these massacres typically finish with the loss of life of the attacker. The man who killed 12 individuals in a Colorado movie show in 2012 was sentenced to life in jail after a 10-week trial; the white supremacist who killed 9 Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, was convicted and sentenced to loss of life. The former scholar who killed 17 individuals at a highschool in Parkland, Fla., pleaded responsible however confronted a sentencing trial final yr, the place a jury voted to maintain him in jail for all times.
Here’s what to know because the Tree of Life trial begins:
Who had been the victims?
At the time of the assault, the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue, which sits in a pleasant neighborhood with a wealthy Jewish historical past, was dwelling to 3 separate congregations, all of which had been gathering for providers in several elements of the constructing. The Tree of Life congregation, based in Pittsburgh greater than 150 years in the past, and the smaller New Light congregation are each a part of the Conservative department of Judaism; the third congregation, Dor Hadash, is Reconstructionist, a extra liberal department.
Members of all three congregations had been killed within the assault. The victims had been Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Daniel Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; the couple Bernice, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 87; and the brothers Cecil, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54.
Six individuals had been wounded, together with 4 cops.
The assault drew shock and outrage from internationally, and introduced individuals from throughout spiritual communities in Pittsburgh collectively in help of the congregations that had been attacked. Some members of Dor Hadash created a nonprofit to foyer for brand spanking new gun legal guidelines. The Tree of Life constructing, which sat empty for years after the bloodbath, is being redesigned by the architect Daniel Libeskind and can quickly turn out to be the house of a brand new group devoted to ending antisemitism. On Sunday, members of the Tree of Life congregation gathered within the synagogue backyard to say goodbye to their previous constructing.
Who is the accused gunman?
Mr. Bowers grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb, raised by his mom and prolonged household. When he was a toddler, his estranged father was charged with raping a girl in the identical neighborhood the place the mass taking pictures would later occur, and killed himself earlier than trial.
After highschool, Mr. Bowers labored as a supply driver for a bakery and later as a long-haul trucker. He tinkered with electronics, labored on the web site of a conservative discuss radio present, and, neighbors mentioned, stored largely to himself, not less than within the offline world.
Online, he was a prolific and virulent presence on right-wing boards, chatting with and reposting distinguished white supremacists and in his personal posts exhibiting explicit vitriol towards immigrants and Jews.
In a number of posts earlier than the killing, he turned his ire on HIAS, a corporation that helps resettle refugees within the United States. Dor Hadash had been certainly one of a whole lot of Jewish congregations nationwide to have fun a National Refugee Shabbat per week earlier than the bloodbath. Mr. Bowers singled that out in his posts, writing shortly earlier than the killing: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
The authorities mentioned that he had 21 weapons registered in his identify, and that he carried out the taking pictures at Tree of Life with three Glock .357 handguns and a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
Mr. Bowers was injured throughout a shootout with the police that ended the assault. He was later charged with 63 crimes, together with 11 counts of hate crimes leading to loss of life and 11 counts of obstruction of free train of spiritual beliefs leading to loss of life. He is dealing with 36 state expenses as effectively, together with 11 counts of homicide, however the Allegheny County District Attorney is holding these expenses in abeyance for the federal felony proceedings.
What do his protection attorneys say?
Mr. Bowers’s protection staff has argued in briefs {that a} sequence of psychiatric and neurological exams, together with “significant events” in his life historical past, have established that he’s affected by a “major mental illness” that features schizophrenia, along with having “structural and functional brain impairments” and epilepsy.
His protection staff consists of Judy Clarke, who has made a profession pleading with juries to spare the lives of individuals chargeable for among the nation’s most infamous acts of violence, together with one of many Boston Marathon bombers, the Unabomber and the person who opened fireplace in an Arizona grocery retailer car parking zone, killing six individuals and injuring 13, together with former Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
Mr. Bowers’s attorneys have repeatedly however unsuccessfully challenged the federal government’s intention to hunt the loss of life penalty. In a submitting this yr, protection attorneys argued that beneath Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the Justice Department had been arbitrary in deciding whether or not or to not pursue capital punishment. They cited a whole lot of different homicide circumstances during which Mr. Garland had elected to not search the loss of life penalty, together with the 2019 mass taking pictures by an anti-immigrant extremist in a Walmart in El Paso.
The authorities has rebutted these arguments by insisting that there are elements on this case, similar to Mr. Bowers’s open antisemitism and his resolution to assault throughout a worship service, “that make the death penalty specifically warranted here.”
What have the congregations’ members mentioned about in search of the loss of life penalty?
There is a big selection of opinions about this case amongst members of the three congregations, together with amongst those that survived the assault and members of the family of the victims.
The rabbi of New Light and members of Dor Hadash have publicly urged the federal government to not pursue the loss of life penalty, an opposition that was motivated, they mentioned in letters and speeches, by spiritual and moral ideas in addition to issues in regards to the results of a chronic trial on already traumatized individuals. Such an ordeal, the president of Dor Hadash wrote in a letter to Mr. Garland, may “impede the healing process for some of our members.” Federal prosecutors have expressed their intentions to play 911 calls from terrified congregants describing the killings as they occurred and present graphic post-mortem images at trial.
But members of the family of 9 of the 11 victims wrote in a letter to The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle final yr that accepting a plea from Mr. Bowers, thus avoiding a trial and the potential for his execution, can be letting him “have the easy way out.”
“His crimes deserve the death penalty,” they wrote.
Source: www.nytimes.com