The mass shooter who murdered 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue will be spared of an execution despite a jury’s verdict to impose the death penalty due to President Joe Biden’s moratorium on the death penalty.
On Wednesday, a 12-member jury unanimously ruled that Robert Bowers should be sentenced to death for carrying out the most heinous antisemitic attack in U.S. history. The jury imposed the death penalty after finding him guilty in June on all 63 charges he faced.
As NBC reported:
For months before the attack, the gunman, Robert Bowers, posted incessantly on social media about his hatred of Jewish people and immigrants. Armed with an AR-15 and other weapons, he then barged into the Tree of Life Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018 and surrendered only when he ran out of ammunition.
The jury received the case late Monday, then shortly before noon on Wednesday, announced they had reached a verdict on the death penalty.
The judge will impose the death sentence on Thursday morning.
The American Jewish Committee said that “what should always be top of mind is the memory” of the victims murdered by “a cold-blooded hater of Jews.”
“Ultimately what is of most significance is not how the shooter will spend the end of his life, but the fact that the U.S. government pursued this case with vigor and demonstrated that such crimes will not be countenanced, excused, or minimized,” it said.
File/A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh, Oct. 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The 11 Jewish worshippers who were murdered were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Cecil Rosenthal, 59; David Rosenthal, 54; Bernice Simon, 84; Sylvan Simon, 86; Daniel Stein, 71; Irving Younger, 69; and Melvin Wax, 87.
Bowers’ case marked the first time federal prosecutors sought and won a death sentence under Biden’s administration. However, Bowers will not be executed while Biden remains in office.
In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed an execution moratorium, in line with Biden’s campaign promise to end the federal death penalty.
Since 1927, only 50 federal executions have been carried out, with the last one occurring in the final days of the Trump administration when triple murderer Dustin John Higgs died by lethal injection on January 16, 2021.
“While today’s unanimous decision by a federal jury in Pittsburgh is an important act of accountability, it will never bring back the eleven people who lost their lives or heal the grief and trauma of their loved ones,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said, adding that Biden was “praying for the victims’ families, and for all those in the broader community who have been so deeply impacted by this tragedy.”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at
