The federal death-penalty trial for accused Tree of Life Synagogue shooter Robert G. Bowers got underway Tuesday, nearly five years after the horrific slaughter of eleven Shabbat-morning worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
Bowers faces 63 charges for the October 27, 2018 attack, which also wounded six people, including police officers. Bowers has pled not guilty and could face the death penalty if convicted. The charges include eleven counts of hate crimes resulting in death and eleven counts of obstruction of religious beliefs resulting in death.
The victims’ families filed into the courtroom as the trial began. After a weeks-long jury selection process, the opening statements from the prosecution detailed the lives of the shooting’s eleven victims, the Associated Press reported. The victims include Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, former Dor Hadash president and one of few physicians from whom patients recalled dignified and respectful treatment during the AIDS epidemic; Joyce Fienberg, 75, a former research specialist, mother of two, and grandmother; brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54, who were roommates in a community home for adults with intellectual disabilities; and Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86, retired nurse and accountant who were married at Tree of Life in 1956.
After listening to an audio of a 911 call that included Bernice Simon’s last words, the jury heard the testimony of Shannon Basa-Sabol, according to CNN.
“I was hearing her being shot,” Basa-Sabol explained. On the phone, Simon exclaimed to Basa-Sabol, “ we’re being attacked. . . We’re being attacked. . . My husband’s shot, oh dear G-d, my husband’s bleeding, he’s shot in the back. . . I’m scared to death.” As the screaming continued, the dispatcher asked Simon if she could hear her, and Simon didn’t respond. Both Simon and her husband were killed.
Prosecutor Soo C. Song described how, once Bowers entered the synagogue and “began to hunt, he moved from room to room, upstairs and downstairs. . . looking for Jewish worshippers to kill.” Armed with multiple firearms, the attacker shot out a large window near the synagogue entrance and opened fire on congregants until he was shot multiple times by police. He then surrendered and was taken into custody.
Song portrayed Bowers’s antisemitic history, including his past praise for the Holocaust. Bowers had posted statements on the website gab.com that criticized the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which helps refugees and asylum seekers flee persecution and has a history dating back to the 19th century. Minutes before the 2018 shooting, Bowers wrote on gab.com: “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.”
During the shooting, police radio transmissions from the scene record Officer Stephen Mescan saying: “suspect is talking about ‘all these Jews need to die.’” He told another officer, Clint Thimons, that “he’s had enough and that Jews are killing our children and the Jews had to die,” Thimons told a judge in 2021. A third officer who’d been on the scene was told by Bowers that “these people are committing genocide on my people and I want to kill Jews.”
The defense’s opening statement described Bowers as having acted on “an irrational motive” with “misguided intent,” specifically wanting to kill Jews who supported HIAS because they were bringing in “invaders” and migrants. Defense attorney Judy Clarke, who has represented notorious killers, including the Boston Marathon bomber and the Unabomber, told jurors that Bowers “somehow believed they were doing something so disastrously wrong, devastating to others and to children, that he had to act,” leading the jury to scrutinize his client’s intent and whether “there is more to the story” than simple prejudice and Jew hatred.
The defense also argued that Bowers is mentally ill and said he has schizophrenia, brain impairments, and epilepsy. Bowers’s lawyers were unsuccessful in challenging the government’s decision to seek the death penalty.
The Rabbi of New Light and members of Dor Hadash have also opposed the government’s pursuit of the death penalty, citing religious and ethical principles and the re-traumatizing effects of an extensive trial. However, nine of the eleven victims’ family members wrote in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that Bowers’ “crimes deserve the death penalty” and that a plea deal, Bowers’ “easy way out,” would rob them of their “day in court.”
On May 31, an image of a Siddur, Jewish prayer book, damaged by a bullet hole was released as evidence after Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life testified on May 30, CNN reported. He described fleeing the chapel and whispering final prayers in a small bathroom over the sound of gunfire and screaming. Another witness, Carol Black, described stepping over her friend’s corpse and saying “goodbye” as she followed police officers out of the building.
The trial is expected to last into July.