Guilty of mass murder. Eligible for capital punishment. Given the death penalty.
The three-step process in the trial of Robert Bowers, who gunned down 11 Jewish people during a Sabbath service at the Tree of Life synagogue building in October, 2018, reached its dramatic denouement Wednesday when a jury sentenced him to death.
For five years, Pittsburgh’s Jewish community has endured shock, it has grieved, it has sought counsel – and then it engaged in its most serious debate since they first settled in the area in 1814. At issue was whether Mr. Bowers – unapologetic for his crime, bold in his assertion of having done his duty – deserved the death penalty, a sentence permitted in three dozen rare, extreme cases in Jewish law but seldom carried out.
“The question that has divided this community,” said Rabbi Danny Schiff, the community scholar at the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation, “is whether this is one of those extreme cases.”
Slightly more than half of Pittsburgh Jews surveyed during the course of the Bowers trial by the Jewish Chronicle, the local Jewish newspaper, were in favour of keeping the death penalty. But a decade-old poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that in cases of a murder conviction, Jewish-Americans favoured life in prison with no chance of parole to the death penalty by a margin of nearly two-to-one.
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Seven of the nine families of the Tree of Life victims told the U.S. Justice Department in a letter two years ago that a resolution short of the death penalty “would be a grave injustice as well as a disservice to the lives, legacies and memories of our deceased family members and to us, the immediate victim-family members that live this nightmare each and every day.” Two other families registered their opposition to the death penalty.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville, who presided over the trial, has no discretion in the case. The jury’s ruling cannot be voided or amended.
A key element in the jury’s decision may have been testimony on Mr. Bowers’ state of mind. It was evident to court observers, and apparently to the jury, that he was pleased that he disrupted services on a Saturday morning and shot down the worshippers. He plainly regarded his act as an accomplishment.
The jury clearly was not affected by testimony on difficulties in his past and a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
“People are saying that a lot of people had terrible childhoods and they didn’t do this,” said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who has been explaining the judicial process to members of the Pittsburgh Jewish community. “But there is a substantial base of people here who believe the death penalty is wrong, it is arbitrary and the state has no business killing people. And yet there are others who think that it is the only possible response to this, and as the trial went on, it became stark and clear what a horrifying thing happened here.”
“We knew in abstract that it was terrible,” said Prof. Harris, whose daughter is a rabbi in Troy, Mich. “But it is even more real now.”
The facile analysis may be that the trial, and now the death sentence, might bring closure to the Squirrel Hill community where Tree of Life and a dozen other synagogues are clustered in one of the most concentrated areas of Jewish life in North America. But it is more likely that the only closure is at the doors of synagogues themselves, where enhanced security measures have brought the openness of Jewish houses of worship to a screeching halt.
“The shooting at Tree of Life changed everything,” said Drew Barkley, executive director at Temple Sinai, not far from the crime scene. “Before Tree of Life, we had no security person here except for the High Holidays, and then everyone wanted his weapon hidden. Now, we have one for all services and people want to have his weapon visible.”
This sentiment has spilled well beyond Pittsburgh, reaching across the United States and into Canada. The “open doors” that synagogues often speak of – one slogan of Temple Emanu-El-Beth-Sholom in Westmount, Que., speaks of “Open Doors. Open Hearts. Open Minds” – now are mostly metaphorical.
“It’s a balancing act,” said Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of the Westmount synagogue. “Ideologically and at a human level, we are very much about open doors and a culture of hospitality and welcome. But people are wary when doors are open that something horrible could happen.”
While the Jewish community will continue to debate the death penalty, the debate over synagogue security is over.
“The worst terrorist attack on the Jewish community in American history was for many a turning point,” said Michael Masters, national director and CEO of the Chicago-based Secure Community Network, a security agency created by the Jewish Federations of North America to protect synagogues and other places such as community centres.
“It made the necessity for security clear. But at the same time for many people, it was perceived as an anomaly. As we saw elsewhere the threats and ongoing reality of targeted violence on Jewish institutions has only gotten worse. But our preparation has gotten better, and Pittsburgh has been a model for us in Jewish security.”
David Shribman