Jury poised to deliberate loss of life penalty or life sentence for gunman in Pittsburgh synagogue bloodbath

PITTSBURGH — A jury is ready to deliberate whether or not to impose the loss of life penalty or a sentence of life in jail with out parole on a person who spewed antisemitic hate earlier than fatally taking pictures 11 worshippers at a synagogue within the coronary heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish neighborhood.

The identical jurors who convicted 50-year-old Robert Bowers in June on 63 legal counts listened to closing arguments Monday within the penalty part of his federal trial, held practically 5 years after the truck driver from suburban Baldwin perpetrated the deadliest assault on Jews in U.S. historical past.

The extent to which psychological sickness and Bowers’ troublesome childhood performed a job within the bloodbath dominated the attorneys’ arguments for and towards capital punishment. The jury is predicted to get the case and start deliberations on Tuesday.

Talking for the federal government, U.S. Lawyer Eric Olshan stated Bowers was clearly motivated by non secular hatred when he entered the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, and opened hearth with an AR-15 rifle, taking pictures everybody he might discover.

The gunman raved incessantly on social media about his hatred of Jewish folks — utilizing a slur for Jewish folks some 400 occasions on a platform favored by the far proper — and stays proud that he killed Jews, the prosecutor reminded jurors.

“Don’t be numb to it. Bear in mind what it means. This defendant focused folks solely due to the religion that they selected,” Olshan stated.

He added: “This can be a case that requires probably the most extreme punishment below the regulation: the loss of life penalty.”

Bowers’ lead protection lawyer, Judy Clarke, acknowledged the horror of his crimes however urged jurors to go for mercy and a life sentence.

Bowers’ attorneys have argued that he has schizophrenia, a critical mind dysfunction whose signs embrace delusions and hallucinations, and that Bowers attacked the synagogue out of a delusional perception that Jews had been serving to to carry a couple of genocide of white folks by coming to assistance from refugees and immigrants. On Monday, Clarke recounted Bowers’ historical past of psychiatric hospitalizations, together with an prolonged keep in a residential juvenile psychological well being program.

The protection additionally introduced proof of Bowers’ troublesome childhood.

“What has occurred can’t be undone. We are able to’t rewind the clock and make it that this mindless crime by no means occurred. All we will do is make the precise determination going ahead. We’re asking you to make the precise determination, and that’s life,” Clarke stated in her closing argument.

A life sentence would imply that “jail is the place Mr. Bowers will die in obscurity, not as a hero and never as a martyr,” she stated.

Olshan, the prosecutor, disputed the protection specialists’ analysis of schizophrenia, asserting that Bowers was not struggling psychosis however had chosen to consider white supremacist rhetoric. And whereas acknowledging that Bowers was a depressed, uncared for youngster, Olshan downplayed the importance of it, noting that Bowers had held jobs, paid payments, and was an in any other case functioning grownup.

“He was not a toddler, he was a grown man. He was liable for his actions, not his household and issues that occurred a long time earlier. He was, he’s liable for his actions,” Olshan stated.

Clarke retorted that “childhood issues.”

“It defies actuality to say he obtained higher, he’s wonderful, he’s simply an evil man. What it does is displays a whole misunderstanding of significant psychological sickness,” she stated.

As a way to impose loss of life, jurors should discover that aggravating circumstances, which make the crime particularly heinous, outweigh mitigating elements that may very well be seen as diminishing his culpability. These aggravating circumstances might embrace the vulnerability of Bowers’ aged and disabled victims and his concentrating on of Jewish folks.

Olshan performed a composite of 911 calls constituted of contained in the synagogue, together with audio of individuals being shot and a survivor’s horrified screams.

He stated Bowers had taken “11 folks, 11 full lives, 11 individuals who liked their households, 11 individuals who liked their associates, 11 individuals who had been liked. … How do you measure the impression of all of that loss?”

The prosecutor spoke about 75-year-old Joyce Fienberg’s look after her household and 65-year-old Richard Gottfried’s devotion to his religion. He stated Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, had the ethos of a rustic physician: “He liked delivering infants however he by no means delivered judgment.” David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59, intellectually disabled brothers, “liked life,” Olshan stated. “However perhaps greater than something, they liked Tree of Life.”

The opposite deceased victims had been Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Youthful, 69.

The assault additionally wounded seven folks, together with 5 responding law enforcement officials. Bowers was shot 3 times earlier than surrendering when he ran out of ammunition.

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Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania.