Judge rejects death penalty challenge
Capital case against man charged with Tree of Life killings will proceed
The federal judge overseeing the capital case of accused synagogue shooter Robert Bowers has ruled that the federal death penalty does not violate the U.S. Constitution and the case will proceed.
U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose on Monday rejected all defense motions challenging the Federal Death Penalty Act.
In her ruling, she said Mr.
Bowers’ lawyers have “failed to meet his burden of establishing that the federal death penalty as a sentencing option is an unconstitutional punishment as administered under the Federal Death Penalty Act.”
Mr. Bowers is accused of gunning down 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018. The Justice Department said it will seek the death penalty, although no federal inmates have been executed since 2003.
Public defenders Michael Novara and Elisa Long and California anti-death penalty lawyer Judy Clarke last year attacked the decision on numerous grounds.
The lawyers argued that the death penalty is unreliable, imposed arbitrarily and marked by racial disparity against minorities. They also said the delays between sentence and execution subject inmates to solitary confinement for decades in violation of the Constitution.
Judge Ambrose said the lawyers raise important issues.
“After careful review, however, I find I am unpersuaded by the same,” she ruled.
She said she is not swayed by the defense arguments that the death penalty is unreliable because an innocent person might be sentenced to death, jurors are unable to understand instructions and death-qualified jurors are
more prone to convict.
The judge said she adheres to the “long line” of federal cases holding that the death penalty does not violate the Eighth Amendment based on the “mere possibility” that an innocent person might be put to death. On jury instructions, she said prior cases also have established that juries are not confused by jury instructions. And on the issue of death-qualified jurors being likely to convict, she said the Supreme Court has rejected similar challenges.
Judge Ambrose also rejected the idea that the death penalty is arbitrary because it is rarely imposed. She said that fact does not make it unconstitutional.
The judge ruled that the defense argument that the death penalty is marked by racial disparity and bias against men and people accused of killing white women also “lacks merit” and said Mr. Bowers isn’t arguing that his race or the race or gender of the victims were considerations in the Justice Department’s decision.
“[Bowers] has failed to show that the government employed or considered any discriminatory reason for prosecuting him as a capital defendant,” the judge wrote.
She also rejected the defense argument that long delays make the death penalty unconstitutional.
“Delays sought by a defendant to ensure a fair trial do not support a constitutional challenge,” she wrote. “Likewise, the potential for solitary confinement does not support a constitutional challenge.”
The defense had also said that “evolving standards of decency” have rendered the death penalty “cruel and unusual punishment,” but the judge dismissed that idea, too. She said the Constitution authorizes use of the death penalty and the Supreme Court has “repeatedly recognized its constitutionality.”
The defense team also had attacked the death penalty under the 10th Amendment’s “anti-commandeering” provision, arguing that only the states are authorized to execute people. The judge said that motion is premature and can be renewed in the event of a conviction.