PITTSBURGH — The federal court trial of the Pennsylvania man charged with fatally shooting 11 people and wounding two at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, began Monday.
Jury selection for the trial could take weeks considering that the attack in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a longtime Jewish enclave, drew widespread media attention, legal analysts say.
“We’re all tense about the upcoming trial,” Barbara Burstin, a local historian and author who has written extensively about Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, said recently. “I had a friend who was killed. We all had somebody.”
Bowers is accused of entering the synagogue — which housed three separate congregations, the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light — during the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, and using an AR-15 assault rifle and three handguns to carry out the attack while shouting antisemitic slurs.
Members of all three congregations were killed, including Rose Mallinger, a 97-year-old who rarely missed a service for decades; Richard Gottfried, a dentist who along with his Catholic wife volunteered at a free dental clinic; Jerry Rabinowitz, a doctor who led Torah studies; and brothers Cecil Rosenthal and David Rosenthal, who had an intellectual disability but were fixtures in the synagogue and at a local firehouse.
Bowers was wounded in a shootout with police before being taken into custody. He has pleaded not guilty.
Authorities said Bowers regularly posted anti-immigrant, antisemitic and white nationalist diatribes on the social media site Gab, popular with right wing extremists, including neo-Nazis. He reportedly targeted the Tree of Life synagogue after learning that the Dor Hadash congregation was involved in a program to assist refugees.
Days after the attack, President Donald Trump called for Bowers to receive the death penalty, and federal prosecutors filed court notice in 2019 that they would seek capital punishment.
State prosecutors, who filed a complaint on the day of the shooting accusing Bowers of criminal homicide, aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation, agreed to let the federal case move forward first. That state’s case is pending and inactive, but there is no statute of limitations, according to the Allegheny County district attorney’s office.
Attorneys representing Bowers had sought a plea agreement that would have resulted in a term of life in prison and no trial, but federal prosecutors rejected the offer.
Defense attorneys reiterated their request this month, saying “the arbitrary nature of the federal death penalty is confirmed by the lack of a discernible, principled basis for why the Department of Justice continues to pursue death sentences for Mr. Bowers but not in very recent comparable cases.”
The defense also filed court documents last month stating that Bowers has schizophrenia and epilepsy, a diagnosis that could be used in arguing that he should not be put to death. Prosecutors have asked the court to allow the government to conduct its own mental health evaluation of Bowers, a move that defense lawyers have opposed.
The trial, coming 4½ years after the shooting, has set off a variety of emotions among Pittsburgh’s Jewish community. The community has long sought justice but is bracing for weeks, perhaps months, of detailed testimony about the gruesome attack.
“My concern with this trial is what will happen afterward?” Burstin said. “Will all this attention only spark more antisemitism? The trial is going to be very hard for people, especially those who are in the neighborhood.”
More broadly, the case comes as the Justice Department has sought to bolster efforts to combat a nationwide spike in hate crimes, which reached a 30-year high in the United States in 2021, according to FBI statistics.
In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League tallied 3,697 antisemitic incidents nationwide — including assaults, harassment and vandalism — a 36 percent increase from the year before and the most since the group began collecting such data in 1979.
The Justice Department reviewed the Bowers case after Attorney General Merrick Garland took office in 2021 and the decision to seek the death penalty was reaffirmed, people familiar with the matter said.
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End of carouselWhen is something a mass killing?
The Washington Post uses the term mass killing to describe any event in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are killed by gunfire.
The Post generally only uses the term mass shooting when we’re citing an organization such as the Gun Violence Archive whose definition differs from ours. The GVA defines a mass shooting as an event in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, are injured or killed by gunfire, including events with no fatalities.
Are these events becoming more common?
In 2022, there were 647 mass shootings (here are the events in 2023 so far.). In 2021, 2020 and 2019, there were 690, 610 and 417, respectively. Before that, the Gun Violence Archive tracked fewer than 400 a year since 2014. Most gun deaths continue to be from suicides and homicides, with men making up the majority of both perpetrators and victims.
How to stay safe in a mass shooting
Every situation is different, but experts advise that you try to stay down, small and out of sight; move away from the gunfire as quickly as is safe; and hide behind a wall if possible.
Where to find support
News of mass killings can be upsetting, especially if you are dealing with violence-related trauma. But help is available. You can call or text 988 for the national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline if you’re experiencing any kind of crisis (it’s not only for suicidal thoughts). Here are more resources.
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Two years ago, Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. The order does not prevent prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, however.
The Bowers case is the second capital prosecution to go to trial under Garland. In March, a jury deadlocked over the death penalty in the case of Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people on a New York City bike path in 2017, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Family members of seven of the nine families whose relatives were killed in the Pittsburgh massacre have said they support the death penalty for Bowers.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship. It was an antisemitic hate crime,” Diane Rosenthal, a sister of Cecil and David Rosenthal, told reporters this month. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”