(Reuters) – A federal jury on Thursday decided that Robert Bowers was eligible for the death penalty for killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, local media reported.
Last month, the jury found Bowers, 50, guilty of dozens of federal hate crimes in the trial at the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania.
Federal prosecutors charged Bowers with 63 counts, including 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death.
In the first phase of sentencing, the jury briefly deliberated on Wednesday afternoon and then for about two hours on Thursday morning before reaching their decision that Bowers was eligible for the death penalty, KDKA TV, a local CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh, reported.
In the final phase, both prosecutors and defense attorneys will have the chance to make arguments on whether he deserves the death penalty. The jury will then go back and deliberate Bowers’ fate.
On June 16, the jury found him guilty on all counts, with defense lawyers offering no dispute that he planned and carried out the attack. Jurors heard testimony from some of the survivors of the attack and evidence of Bowers’ antisemitism, including multiple posts attacking Jews made on a far-right website in the months leading up to the attack.
In federal capital cases, a unanimous vote by jurors in a separate penalty phase of the trial is required in order to sentence a defendant to death, and the judge cannot reject the jury’s vote. If jurors are unable to reach a unanimous decision, the offender is instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.
In the sentencing phase, prosecutors argued that Bowers had the necessary intent and premeditation to qualify for the death penalty. They presented witnesses and evidence to show he carefully planned the attack and deliberately targeted vulnerable elderly worshipers.
Defense lawyers presented that Bowers suffers from major mental illness, including schizophrenia, and so lacked the necessary level of intent.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Tim Ahmann)
