(New York) The perpetrator of a 2018 attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest against Jews in US history and for which he faces the death penalty, was found guilty on Friday of murders , reported US media.
Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old white trucker, was accused of carrying out 11 murders in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in this eastern United States city, aggravated by the qualification of an anti-Semitic act.
This exceptional trial will now enter a second phase to determine whether the culprit should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment by the federal court of Pennsylvania, according to the CNN and ABC networks and the New York Times.
According to the judicial press present in Pittsburgh, the jury deliberated for about five hours to reach this first verdict.
Mr. Bowers was prosecuted on 63 counts.
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old white trucker, was accused of carrying out 11 murders in 2018, aggravated by the characterization of an anti-Semitic act.
Beyond the admission of guilt, the issue of this two-part trial is centered on the capital punishment which could be pronounced by the American federal justice.
Avoid the death penalty
During the investigation phase, lawyers for Robert Bowers had unsuccessfully offered to plead “guilty” in exchange for the guarantee that their client would not be sentenced to death.
The US Department of Justice refused.
On October 27, 2018, Bowers stormed into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue armed with three pistols and a semi-automatic assault rifle.
Shouting “all Jews must die,” he opened fire and killed 11 people, including a 97-year-old faithful, in the midst of Shabbat ceremonies in a historic Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh, committing the bloodiest attack against Jews in UNITED STATES.
Before that, he had posted racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages on a far-right social network.
Then-President Republican Donald Trump had sought the death penalty, a request tracked by the then Justice Department and upheld after Democratic President Joe Biden began his term in office on January 20, 2021.
But while candidate Biden had pledged in 2020 to abolish the death penalty at the national level, this trial has revived the debates around this supreme punishment still practiced in many American states.
As early as 2019, the Pittsburgh federal prosecutor had warned that he would seek the death penalty for Robert Bowers, citing his “lack of remorse” and “his hatred and contempt” for Jews.
During the proceedings of the trial which began at the end of May, his lawyer Judy Clarke had immediately recognized that his client was indeed the man who had shot at the Jews. “There is no point in looking for meaning in a senseless act,” she had defended, seeking above all to save Bowers’ life rather than to plead his innocence.
This trial is being held in the context of an increase in racist and anti-Semitic acts in the United States, which have reached the highest level in 30 years, according to statistics from the federal police, the FBI, cited in April by the washington post.
According to the American organization for the fight against anti-Semitism Anti Defamation League, the country had experienced a record number of 2,717 anti-Semitic acts in 2021 (assaults, verbal attacks, material damage, etc.), an increase of 34% over one year. .
In 2022, this association counted 3,697 anti-Semitic acts (+36% over one year), unheard of since 1979, according to the washington post.