A jury has ruled that Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooter Robert Bowers will face the death penalty.
Bowers, whose defense hoped to avoid a death penalty, learned of his fate around noon on Wednesday when jurors read their decision.
The mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue on 27 October, 2018, left 11 people dead and became the most deadly antisemitic attack in US history.
The jurors spent two days deliberating before reaching their conclusions. All 12 jurors had to agree in order to impose a death penalty.
Bowers' legal team initially offered a plea deal to the prosecution, promising a guilty plea from the mass shooter if they agreed not to seek the death penalty. The prosecution refused the deal.
Defense attorney Judy Clarke offered a plea to the jury to spare Bowers’ life.
“We can’t rewind the clock and make it such that this senseless crime never happened,” she argued. “All we can really do is make the right decision going forward. And we are asking you to make the right decision, and that is life.”
She asked the jurors to consider the traumas of Bowers’ childhood and his mental illness when issuing their sentence, noting that “he succumbed to his mental illness, to his delusional beliefs, and brought us where we are today.”
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Park Dietz — who testified as an expert witness for the prosecution in the trials of John Hinkley Jr, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Regan, and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer — also testified for the prosecution regarding Bowers. He said Bowers suffered no delusions that would have called into question his intent to kil the worshippers at the synagogue.
Intent is one of three critera that must be met before a jury can pass down a death sentence. A defendant must also be over the age of 18 and have at least one aggravating factor — in Bowers’ case hate crimes — to qualify for a death sentence.
A jury found him guilty of all 63 charges against him during a trial in June.
