The defendant, who pleaded not guilty, is accused of having perpetrated 11 murders aggravated by the qualification of an anti-Semitic act. He faces the death penalty. Jury selection in federal court in Pennsylvania (northeast) began on April 24, for a period of four weeks, and the trial began in earnest on Tuesday to try Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old white truck driver, prosecuted on 63 counts.
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On October 27, 2018, he burst into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, 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 worshipper, in the middle of a Shabbat ceremony in a historic Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh, committing the bloodiest attack on Jews in the United States. Before that, he posted racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant messages on a far-right social network.
Debate on the death penalty
Then-Republican President Donald Trump had called for the death penalty for Bowers, a request followed by the Justice Department and confirmed after Democratic President Joe Biden's term began on Jan. 20, 2021. But while candidate Biden had pledged in 2020 to abolish the death penalty at the national level, this trial revives in the United States the debates around this supreme punishment still practiced in many American states.
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As early as 2019, the federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh had indicated that he would seek the death penalty for Robert Bowers, citing his "lack of remorse" and "hatred and contempt" for Jews.
Upsurge in anti-Semitic violence
This trial, which should last until July according to the press, is taking place in a context of a surge of 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 combating anti-Semitism Anti Defamation League, the country had experienced in 2021 a record number of 2,717 anti-Semitic acts (aggressions, verbal attacks, material damage ...), an increase of 34% over one year. In 2022, this association counted 3,697 anti-Semitic acts (+ 36% over one year), unseen since 1979, according to the Washington Post.
