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Synagogue shooting defendant Robert Bowers, right, sits with public defender Michael J. Novara as U.S. District Judge Robert Colville reads the verdict.
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A jury’s death sentence for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter doesn’t necessarily seal his fate

James Hilston/Post-Gazette

A jury’s death sentence for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter doesn’t necessarily seal his fate

Attorneys for shooter Robert Bowers are likely to file an appeal, beginning a new process which could stretch for years

Jurors on Wednesday handed down a sentence of death for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, closing the book on his trial proceedings and likely opening the book on a lengthy appeals process.

Death penalty cases can drag on with appeals for years, creating an even bigger psychological and emotional toll on victims, their families and the community as a whole — especially for those who maybe never wanted a trial in the first place.

The death penalty is “an intensely personal issue for many people, and for victims' families in particular,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit. The DPIC has found that victims’ opinions on particular punishment someone should receive vary greatly.

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“Some feel that a death sentence for the person who took their loved one will bring some peace and some closure,” said Ms. Maher. “Many other families say it only creates another grieving family and does not bring their loved one back to them, so there is no peace and closure for them.”

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The jurors — seven men and five women — convicted Robert Bowers on June 16 of all 63 federal charges filed against him in connection with the Oct. 27, 2018, shooting inside the hulking monolith building at the corner of Shady and Wilkins avenues.

The synagogue he targeted housed three congregations: Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light. Eleven people were killed: Richard Gottfried, Joyce Fienberg, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger.

On Wednesday, after 10 hours of deliberations, the jury sentenced Bowers to death.

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"This guy is already a dead man walking. Now each person impacted by this horrific hate crime is quite likely to have the rug pulled out from under them yet again as the appeals process drags on for years,” said Abe Bonowitz, cofounder of Death Penalty Action, which works to stop executions and abolish the death penalty through advocacy, education, and action. “Sadly, every so often this is going to come up in the news, reopening wounds repeatedly for at least a decade or two. Worse, however, is that instead of fading to obscurity, this racist anti-Semitic terrorist gains notoriety as a martyr for others who think like he does."

When testimony began on May 30, Bowers joined a short list of federal defendants who actually go to trial. Nearly 90% of federal defendants charged with any offense plead guilty, according to a Pew Research analysis of judicial data for fiscal year 2022. Just over 8% have their cases dismissed at some point in the process.

Of the remaining 2.3% who go to trial, they are nearly five times as likely to be found guilty as those who are acquitted.

In terms of the death penalty, the numbers are even smaller.

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Since 2009, 54 federal death penalty cases have gone to trial, according to data kept by Ms. Maher and the DPIC. In four of those cases, defendants pled guilty before the trial got to the penalty phase.

Of the 50 other cases, 30 have ended with a life sentence.

“Far more people get a life sentence,” Ms. Maher said.

Even after two months of evidence and testimony and three phases completed, proceedings may still be long from over. The jury’s death sentence doesn’t necessarily seal the fate of Bowers, says Saint Vincent College professor Bruce Antkowiak.

“Going immediately to the actual execution – it’s not going to happen that way,” he said.

Mr. Antkowiak anticipates the defense will appeal on “any and all” grounds of error preserved in the trial, and rather quickly.

A notice of appeal to the Third Circuit can come 20 days within the time of the sentence, he said. And that potentially swift appeal could turn into a prolonged process in an already prolonged case, one that’s continued five years after the massacre.

“They'll file the appeal rather readily,” he said. “But in terms of having the appeal disposed of it is going to be a matter well over a year to a year and a half…There will be briefings filed on both sides, probably an oral argument in front of the Third Circuit, and ultimately a decision. This process can readily take about one to two years just on the direct appeal aspect itself.”

Any arguments from the prosecution that may have “improperly” incited the passions of the jury could be fair game for an appeal.

“There will be a tremendous number of issues raised here, there's no question about it,” he said. “This litigation has been going on for a long time. There have been issues raised pretrial. There were issues raised during the trial. This is going to be an argument on appeal in which many, many issues are going to be raised for sure.”

The court already must independently consider whether the verdict was the product of passion or prejudice or some other inappropriate basis. If the evidence is sufficient, the case is affirmed, he said.

But once the case is affirmed, Bowers can still appeal the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. That normally involves an allegation that, for example, the legal representation was ineffective or another constitutional error occurred during the trial.

The defense can also move forward with litigation about the method of execution involving cruel and unusual punishment. For instance, defendants have argued in other cases that the lethal injection and drug to be used produce “unnecessary pain,” he said.

Or if Bowers is found to be legally insane while in prison, that could very well halt his execution altogether.

“There have been times where a person has been in prison for some time, awaiting execution and at that last minute, they come into court and say that they are insane and therefore cannot be executed,” Mr. Antkowiak said.

While there is currently a moratorium on federal death sentences, that could change depending upon the 2024 election.

“The Department of Justice has continued to defend the death sentences that already exist for the men on death row,” Ms. Maher said. “The thing to note is that the next administration, if it is not President Biden, could resume executions.

“There is the possibility we could see executions on a scale that there were under President Trump,” she said. “A lot can happen between now and then.”

From 2003 through July 2020, no federal inmates were executed. In 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to resume executions after a 17-year hiatus.

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.

A year later, on July 14, 2020, the government carried out the first of what would total 13 executions over a six-month period. The last execution under the Trump administration was Jan. 16, 2021, four days before Joe Biden’s inauguration. The crimes for which the 13 inmates were executed were committed between 1992 and 2004.

As of this month, there are 42 men on death row, most of them held at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. The high-security penitentiary holds the government’s lethal-injection execution chamber.

Two federal death row inmates — Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Kaboni Savage, a Philadelphia drug lord convicted of 12 counts of racketeering-related murder — are held at ADX Florence, a so-called supermax prison in Fremont County, Colo.

Savage, whose murders include four children killed in a firebombing, is the only federal death row inmate from Pennsylvania. Both he and Tsarnaev will be transferred to Terre Haute when their respective execution dates are set.

For a lot of families, the idea of closure means an execution, Ms. Maher said, which means waiting years for that to actually happen.

“The other downside of a death penalty case is that because they are scrutinized so closely, we see many, many reversals,” Ms. Maher said. “And the appeals often require families to live through the events — the painful events — that took their loved ones from them. So reliving that crime and that pain, as the appeals wind through the court, is a significant downside of seeking a death sentence.”

There is also concern for vicarious trauma during a death penalty trial, “which is when you weren't directly impacted but you're hearing about the things and that can affect you,” said Jenn Hudak, the director of clinical services at the Center for Victims in Pittsburgh.

While a verdict will bring some peace and closure, the healing process is slow, and will continue for a long time, “so the end of the trial won't necessarily bring the end to their strain or their stress,” said Stefanie Small, director of Clinical Services at Jewish Family & Community Services.

“That is important for people to remember because closure is imaginary,” said Ms. Small. “You don't come to the end of this journey and feel everything's great. Everything might be a little bit better, but there's still healing to go,” no matter whether people are pro or anti death penalty.

And as families heal and appeals move forward, it may feel like the band aids they just put on are already being ripped off, Ms. Small said, and time doesn’t heal all wounds.

“So for every appeal, the further away it is, the more likely it will be to sting less because in the end, he's still in jail awaiting the death penalty. For families who might not be in favor of the death penalty, they know that he is still alive on death row,” Ms. Small said, so there may always be some sort of discontent.

Ms. Hudak said while a verdict can provide closure for some victims and their families, “it's called a criminal system, it's not called a victim system.”

“I think that's a lot for people to get their arms around and understand, and I think it can absolutely be retraumatizing for individuals,” Ms. Hudak said.

The experience for jurors, too, is an intense one, as they were the ones to review the most graphic parts of the case, including photos from the shooting and the autopsies during the guilt phase of the trial. Ms. Maher said this is “an experience they will need to contend with after the trial.”

“They will experience by proxy the kind of extreme grief and suffering that those families have experienced as a result of this crime. That trauma will be coupled with making this life decision for Mr. Bowers, which is an incredibly difficult decision for any human being to make,” Ms. Maher said.

But above all, mental health experts and those who have worked closely with the Jewish community following the trial have said resiliency has risen above all.

“Our community has come out stronger through this. Resilience, strength, unity. That's what the Pittsburgh Jewish community really means,” said Ms. Small. “That's what we really are.”

-—Megan Guza contributed to this report

First Published: August 2, 2023, 11:23 p.m.
Updated: August 3, 2023, 9:44 a.m.

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