The Trial of Robert Bowers, a Newly-Rounding Jewish Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a Premeditated Mass Shooter

At the time of the attack, the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue, which sits in a friendly neighborhood with a rich Jewish history, was home to three separate congregations, all of which were gathering for services in different parts of the building. The Tree of Life congregation, founded in Pittsburgh more than 150 years ago, and the smaller New Light congregation are both conservative; the third congregation, Dor Hadash, is Reconstructionist, a progressive movement within Judaism.

The trial will take place in two phases; the first on guilt and the second on the penalty. The facts surrounding the shooting are pretty well known, so there will be a months long tribunal to determine whether Robert Bowers should be put to death. His lawyers have offered to resolve the case with a guilty plea on all counts in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of release, but federal prosecutors have rejected these offers.

Trials for mass shooters are relatively rare, given that these massacres often end with the death of the attacker. The man who killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 was sentenced to life in prison after a 10-week trial; the white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, was convicted and sentenced to death. A jury decided to keep the man in prison for the rest of his life after he pleaded guilty to 17 counts of premeditated murder.