Jury selection begins over 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack

PITTSBURGH — Most prospective jurors said Monday that if they were to convict a man of killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, they would be capable of sentencing him to die. He offered to plead guilty in return for a life sentence, but federal prosecutors turned him down even though Joe Biden pledged while campaigning for president three years ago that, if elected, he would work to end the federal death penalty. In an filing earlier this month, prosecutors said Bowers “harbored deep, murderous animosity towards all Jewish people.” They said he also expressed hatred for HIAS, founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a nonprofit humanitarian group that helps refugees and asylum seekers. During a 2021 pretrial hearing, Officer Clint Thimons testified Bowers was “very calm and he said he’s had enough and that Jews are killing our children and the Jews had to die.” Another officer, David Blahut, said Bowers told him “these people are committing genocide on my people and I want to kill Jews.” Prosecutors wrote in a court filing that Bowers had nearly 400 followers on his Gab social media account “to whom he promoted his antisemitic views and calls to violence against Jews.” Colville, who was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump more than three years ago, previously spent nearly two decades as a county judge in Pittsburgh. The death penalty trial is proceeding three years after Biden said during his 2020 campaign that he would work to end capital punishment at the federal level and in states that still use it.