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PITTSBURGH, April 13 (AP) — The man charged in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history has been trying for years to avoid a federal jury trial that will determine whether he is convicted in the shooting death of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue .
Ultimately those efforts failed, with less than two weeks until jury selection.
Robert Bowers, 46, who pleaded guilty to the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue led to his arrest and confessed to police, court documents show. He said he was willing to accept life without parole and waive his right to appeal.
But his offer was rejected by the U.S. Department of Justice: In return for pleading guilty, he would no longer face the death penalty.
Much of the legal battle, which has been going on for more than four years, has focused on the crucial sentencing phase after the guilty or not guilty portion of the trial is over.
Families of some of the victims have approved a lifetime non-parole deal that would avoid days or even weeks of harrowing testimony and gruesome details of autopsy results, crime scene photos and 911 recordings, including the phone calls of two of those killed.
In the end, the Justice Department rejected Powers’ proposal and flatly rejected his lawyer’s request for details about the secret process of federal death penalty sentencing.
“Whether to impose the death penalty will be the jury’s final decision, not the government’s,” federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Robert Colville in an April 3 filing.
“The purpose of this US prosecution is justice, not punishment.”
Powers’ attorneys wrote this month that the federal death penalty lacks “a clear principled basis to explain why the Justice Department continues to pursue the death penalty against Mr. Powers, but not in recent similar cases.”
The 2019 announcement that the federal government would impose the death penalty on Powers was opposed by some people directly affected by the killing. One of the three congregations he was responsible for attacking – Dor Hadash – objected in writing.
A month after taking office, Gov. Josh Shapiro cited those objections as one of the reasons he’s continuing the state’s moratorium on executions. He urged state lawmakers to pass legislation ending the death penalty in the state.
Shapiro, a Democrat, said in February that his “first instinct in 2018 was that the killer should be put to death.
In fact, I said so publicly at the time. Over time, my thinking on this issue has changed. “
The synagogue massacre has spanned two presidential terms — Republican President Donald Trump was in office when the massacre occurred.
Even before Powers was identified as a suspect, Trump declared that the murderer should “pay the ultimate price” and that the death penalty should be “popular” again.
After a 17-year hiatus, federal executions resumed during Trump’s presidency, with 13 federal prisoners executed during his final six months in office.
Democrat Joe Biden has said during the 2020 campaign that he will work to end the federal death penalty, but critics say he has done nothing to achieve that goal.
However, he has placed a moratorium to study current policies and procedures — though that hasn’t stopped his federal prosecutors from imposing the death penalty on Powers.
Powers has been charged with dozens of federal crimes in connection with the October 2018 massacre. Investigators have linked him to vicious anti-Semitic social media posts. Prosecutors said he told police at the crime scene that he wanted to kill Jews.
“Personally, and many people I know, we support the death penalty in certain circumstances,” said Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Committee for Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. “A shocking case like this seems to be what it’s about.”
State Rep. Emily Kinkead, a Democrat and opponent of the death penalty who represents parts of Pittsburgh, was disappointed that federal prosecutors did not accept Powers’ offer of a guilty plea in exchange for life in prison.
“As a state, as a government, are we so focused on killing people that we’re not going to keep these families closed so they don’t have to sit on trial and listen to their loved ones go to 911? Talk about cruelty and unusual — It seems bad to ask family members to do this,” Kim Ki-duk said.
The Pittsburgh synagogue case has some similarities to Dylann Roof’s 2015 conviction and death penalty for the racist killing of nine members of a black South Carolina congregation.
In that case, the victims’ loved ones had a variety of views on the death penalty, from arguing that taking life is never justified, to those who say “an eye for an eye” is just.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the death row inmate for the Boston Marathon bombings, also did not enjoy the general support of the victims’ families.
A federal jury is finally divided over the death penalty for a man who killed eight people in a terrorist attack on a New York bike lane. Instead, Sayfullo Saipov was sentenced to life in prison last month — the first federal death penalty case to come to trial under Biden.
In February, a white supremacist gunman who killed 10 black people in a Buffalo supermarket was sentenced to life in prison — New York has no death penalty. He has offered to plead guilty in federal court to avoid the death penalty. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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