Death penalty trial begins for accused in Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting

Jury selection will begin Friday in the federal death penalty trial of a truck driver accused of shooting 11 Jews to death at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Robert G. Bowers, who is from the Pittsburgh suburb of Baldwin, faces 63 counts in the October 27, 2018, attack at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three Jewish congregations were holding Sabbath activities. The charges include 11 counts of obstructing the free exercise of religion resulting in death and 11 counts of hate crime resulting in death.

If convicted, Bowers, 50, could seek the death penalty. He offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but federal prosecutors turned him down. His lawyer also recently said he has schizophrenia and structural and functional brain disorders.

Federal executions resumed during Donald Trump’s presidency after a 17-year hiatus, and 13 federal inmates were executed in the past six months. Joe Biden indicated during the 2020 campaign that he would work to end the federal death penalty, but his Justice Department did not intervene in the Bowers case.

Prosecutors presented various pieces of evidence

During the trial, prosecutors had to tell the jury about incriminating statements Bowers allegedly made to investigators, an online trail of antisemitic statements they said showed the attack was motivated by religious hatred, and the gun recovered from him at the scene of the police shooting. Bowers three times before surrendering.

Prosecutors said in court filings that they could introduce autopsy recordings and 911 recordings during the trial, including recordings of two phone calls from the victim who was later shot to death. He said the evidence included a Colt AR-15 rifle, three Glock .357 pistols and hundreds of cases of cartridges, bullets and shrapnel.

Bowers also wounded seven people, including five police officers who responded to the scene, investigators said.

In a filing earlier this month, prosecutors said Bowers “served deep and murderous hostility toward all Jews.” He said he also expressed his hatred for HIAS, which he founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a nonprofit humanitarian group that helps refugees and asylum seekers.

During a 2021 pretrial hearing, two police officers testified about antisemitic statements Bowers made quietly during interviews with authorities.

Prosecutors wrote in court filings that Bowers has nearly 400 followers on the social media account Gab “where he promotes antisemitic views and calls for violence against Jews.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Colville, who was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump more than three years ago, will preside over the hearing. He had previously been a county judge in Pittsburgh for nearly twenty years.

Three congregations – Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light – have spoken out against antisemitism and other forms of fanaticism since the shooting. Three congregants have been meeting at a nearby synagogue since the attack closed the Tree of Life building.

The Tree of Life Congregation is also working with partners on plans to renovate and rebuild the synagogue, which is still standing, by creating a complex for a sanctuary, a museum, a memorial and a center to combat antisemitism.

Antisemitic attacks rose last year in the US: report

Less than a year after the Tree of Life massacre, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California. The 19-year-old gunman, who was linked to an online manifesto advocating antisemitism, was sentenced in 2021 to life without parole in the shooting that killed one person and wounded three, including a synagogue rabbi.

In early 2022, a British national was shot and killed by a tactical unit after taking hostages at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.

Earlier this month, a report released by Tel Aviv University’s Center for Contemporary European Jewish Studies and the US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) showed that antisemitism will increase in the US in 2022.

A report last year found that 2021 set a new high for antisemitic incidents, with the coronavirus pandemic leading to a worldwide rise in antisemitism. This year, researchers say that “2022 does not mark a reversal of the universal trend, and in some countries, the most surprising of which is the United States, it is increasing.”

The ADL found that the number of antisemitic incidents in the US increased by more than 35 percent, from 2,721 in 2021 to 3,697 in 2022.

Researchers have found that identifiable Jews, especially ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as haredi Jews, are the primary targets of antisemitic violence in the West.