Jurors sentence Pittsburgh synagogue gunman to death
PITTSBURGH — 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 worshippers in their synagogue, and to witnesses who tried to explain what drove the man to commit such horror.
And on Wednesday, they listened as a judge announced the jury's unanimous decision that the gunman, Robert Bowers, should be condemned to die.
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 relatives of those killed.
“Finally, justice has been served,” said Leigh Stein, whose father, Dan Stein, was killed in the attack. “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.
“Hate crimes like this one inflict irreparable pain on individual victims and their loved ones, and lead entire communities to question their very belonging,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “All Americans deserve to live free from the fear of hate-fueled violence, and the Justice Department will hold accountable those who perpetrate such acts.”
At a hearing scheduled for Thursday morning, Robert Colville, a U.S. district judge, will formally impose the death sentence that the jury recommended.
The members of the three congregations that had been meeting for services in the Tree of Life synagogue on that gray and drizzly Sabbath morning in Pittsburgh have never come to a consensus about whether a death sentence would be a just outcome. But many had grown to appreciate the trial itself.
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. To others, it signified a break with a long and tragic history of governments looking away when Jewish people were targets of violence.
The “lengthy but fair judicial process,” said Howard Fienberg, whose mother, Joyce Fienberg, was killed in the attack, was “a marker and a reminder that we belong here. That this is where we are, this is where we've been, and this country is where we belong. We remain a part of it and we always will.”