A jury is considering the death penalty for a hate crime

The Loss of a Jewish Synagogue in the Bethe-Salpeter Shooting, Revisited: “A Jewish Perspective on the Pittsburgh Shooting“

Squirrel Hill Stands Against Gun Violence, a group founded by three members of Congregation Dor Hadash after the attack, said in a statement on Wednesday that blame for the attack lay not only with the gunman, but also with “those politicians and legislators who have fought against common-sense gun laws.”

Others were not good. Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, which opposes capital punishment and has written about his opposition to the death penalty in the Pittsburgh case from a Jewish perspective, noted that appeals were likely to drag the case on for years, “reopening wounds repeatedly.”

The verdict was praised by some organizations. Michael Masters, the national director and chief executive of the Secure Community Network, said the sentence sends a message to extremists, terrorists and antisemites that the United States will not tolerate hate and violence against the Jewish people.

The congregant from the Tree of Life synagogue said she was against the death penalty in general, but did not fault the jurors for unanimously sentencing the shooter to death.

A couple who are members of the Dor Hadash synagogue, one of which was attacked, kissed each other as they were leaving the courthouse.

“We take this position not out of a desire to seek revenge or to ‘even the score,’ but because we believe that the shooter crossed a line,” they said. Governments and religious authorities have often looked away in the past when Jews were murdered.

“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,” Stephen Cohen and Barbara Caplan wrote in the statement.

The co-presidents of the New Light congregation, which lost three members in the attack, issued a statement acknowledging the wrenching debate that had preceded the trial.

As the case continued through the courts, many members of the community were stuck in neutral, according to a statement from the rabbi who hid in a bathroom during the attack. “Now that the trial is nearly over and the jury has recommended a death sentence,” he said, “it is my hope that we can begin to heal and move forward.”

The family of Bernice and Sylvan Simon, a married couple in their 80s who were killed, expressed their “extreme gratitude” to the jurors and said “we fully respect their verdict and decisions.”

When the jury came back with a decision, no one in the Jewish community reacted the same way as relatives and friends of the victims. Some expressed firm approval of the death sentence or acceptance that the jury had reached the right decision, while others were disappointed at the outcome.

Families of the victims of the attack at the synagogue have differing opinions on whether the government should seek the death penalty for the suspect, and members of three nearby synagogues also disagree.

After a jury determined on Wednesday that Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, should face the death penalty, loud sobbing could be heard in a hallway of the courthouse and several relatives of victims of the shooting could be seen crying as they walked out of the courtroom.

A Judgment for Death Penalty in an Antisemitic Attack by the Revised Rabbi Elijah Bowers of Pentecost

The rabbi stopped when the shattered glass of the windows reminded her of the way things used to be. She had difficulty finding a routine that felt right to her. She said she looks forward to that changing, someday.

The jury, apparently, agreed. In July, jurors took two hours to determine that Mr. Bowers’ mental health problems weren’t severe enough to make him ineligible for the death penalty.

“The defendant doesn’t have schizophrenia,” Eric Olshan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in his closing argument. He told the jury what was inside of his mind. “It’s filled with hate and common, extreme, white supremacist, antisemitic tropes.”

But experts called by the government disputed many of these diagnoses, and argued that the virulently bigoted views that Mr. Bowers expressed about Jewish people and immigrants were not just products of his own delusional thinking but rather views shared by thousands of others on extremist websites. Prosecutors detailed the months of planning that he put into the attack, the studying of different potential targets and the hundreds of antisemitic posts that Mr. Bowers had made or shared on social media.

“I wish we could have a conversation about the challenges he faced in life, how he tried and tried to make it in life,” Ms. Clarke told the jury in her closing argument. I want to have a talk about how he tried and failed, and how he tried again and again. I wish we could talk about how he died from his brain damage and mental illness.

Several experts called by the defense diagnosed him with schizophrenia, and one psychiatrist, who had interviewed him for nearly 40 hours, said he had become obsessed with delusions about his duty to fight the forces of Satan before the approaching apocalypse.

Source: Jury Votes for Death Penalty in Antisemitic Attack

The Trial of Howard Fienberg, Jude Votes for Death Penalty in Antis, and a Tribute to the Jewish People of Pittsburgh

Mr. Bowers’s defense team, which included Judy Clarke, a lawyer with a long record of defending people accused of capital crimes, had repeatedly offered to have Mr. Bowers plead guilty in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of release, but the government rejected these offer

The police rushed to the synagogue and, after exchanging gunfire with Mr. Bowers, eventually cornered him in a classroom. He was wounded by gunfire after the attack and was still preaching his hatred of Jewish people a short time later. The attack wounded six people, including four police officers.

He killed Rose Mallinger, 97, as she huddled under a pew with her daughter, whom he also shot and wounded. He killed Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Dor Hadash, who had heard gunshots and run down the hallway to offer help. He killed two people in the downstairs kitchen, and two people in the upstairs kitchen, and shot another one in the closet.

He stalked the hallways and chapels, murdering members of all three congregations. Cecil and David Rosenthal, brothers who were intellectually disabled, were shot and killed by him. Ms Fienberg and Irving Younger were killed in the chapel as Tree of Life began its services, while the Simon family was killed in the pews.

Howard Fienberg said that the lengthy but fair judicial process was a sign that he and his family belong in this country. That this is where we are, this is where we’ve been, and this country is where we belong. We will always be a part of it.

Some said that as raw and painful as the trial was at moments, it was the first time that they had truly learned what happened that day. It signaled a break with a long and sad history of governments looking away when Jewish people were targets of violence.

The three synagogues that had been gathering for services in the same day in Pittsburgh have never come to a decision as to whether the death penalty would be a just outcome. But many had grown to appreciate the trial itself.

At a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning, Robert Colville, a U.S. district judge, will formally impose the death sentence that the jury recommended.

Source: Jury Votes for Death Penalty in Antisemitic Attack

Day of the 7th Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh, Oct. 27, 2018, marked the 50th anniversary of hate crimes in U.S. history

Nearly every morning for three months, family members and survivors quietly gathered in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh. They listened to witnesses recount the terror of the morning nearly five years ago when a gunman murdered 11 worshipers in their synagogue, and to witnesses who tried to explain what drove the man to commit such horror.

The verdict, after nearly 10 hours of deliberations by the jurors, was met with a mix of solemnity, gratitude and relief among the survivors and families of those killed.

The family of Dan Stein, the man who was killed in the attack, said justice had been served. “Even though nothing will bring my dad back, I feel like a weight has been lifted.”

The massacre, on Oct. 27, 2018, is considered the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, and the death sentence is the first handed down in federal court during the Biden administration.

The US attorney general said in a statement that hate crimes like this one lead entire communities to question their very belonging. All Americans deserve to be free from fear of hate and the Justice Department will hold accountable those who perpetrate such acts.