Closing Arguments Presented in the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting Case

Deliberations are underway in a case centering on the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre that killed 11 congregants.

Prosecutors made their closing arguments against a man accused of turning a United States synagogue into a “hunting ground” in a 2018 shooting that left 11 people dead.

A 50-year-old former trucker named Robert Bowers is facing 63 criminal charges for carrying out a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, considered the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history. Bowers faces a possible death warrant if found guilty.

But while Bowers’ defense used closing arguments Thursday to cast doubt on his motives, federal prosecutors highlighted the trucker’s history of anti-Jewish statements as they sought conviction on hate crime and obstruction of religious exercise charges.

“He is full of hatred for the Jews,” prosecutor Mary Hahn said, noting that Bowers had a long history of engaging in and promoting anti-Semitic and white supremacist content online. “That’s what prompted him to act.”

Defense attorneys have done little to dispute that Bowers carried out the attack. In her final statement, public defender Elisa Long admitted there was “no justification” for Bowers’ actions and acknowledged the grief of the survivors.

But, he argued, Bowers was not necessarily motivated by anti-Semitic hatred or to disrupt religious activity.

Rather, he said, Bowers had been blinded by “nonsense and irrational” beliefs about immigration, which he associated with the Jewish refugee nonprofit Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). The organization’s motto is “Welcome the Outsider. Protect the refugee.

Long described Bowers as an adherent of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, the idea that whites are being replaced by non-white immigrants. She said that Bowers placed Jewish organizations at the center of this conspiracy theory.

Racist myths portraying Jews as the masterminds of nefarious conspiracies are longstanding staples of anti-Semitic rhetoric, and prosecutors rejected the defense argument as a distinction without difference.

Attorney Eric Olshan reminded the jury that the attack took place in “the center of the Jewish universe”: the Squirrel Hill neighborhood in pittsburgh. He described Bowers as “hunting, looking for Jews to kill.”

Prosecutor Mary Hahn told jurors that Bowers, who was arrested after a shooting that wounded five police officers, allegedly told law enforcement that “all these Jews need to die.”

Many of those killed were older people, remembered by loved ones and friends as thoughtful and caring members of their community.

Earlier this week, jurors heard harrowing accounts from people who survived the attack, including a woman who stood still as her mother died at her side during the massacre.

“I just laid on the floor and didn’t move in case he was there or came back. I didn’t want her to know that she was alive,” said Andrea Wedner, whose mother, Rose Mallinger, 97, was killed in the attack.

“I kissed my fingers,” Wedner said of the moment his mother died, “and touched my fingers to her skin.”