Jury in Pittsburgh Synagogue Trial to Weigh Death Sentence

In her closing argument, Elisa Long, a federal public defender representing Mr Bowers, stressed that he had not gotten into trouble with the law before the attack. But, she said, in the months leading up to it, he had “spent an enormous amount of time alone on the Internet absorbing all sorts of vile and extremist content.”

But Mr Bowers is not pursuing an insanity defense, in which the defendant admits to having committed some criminal act, but states that, due to mental incapacity, he did not fully understand that it was wrong. Insanity defenses are rare, and legislation made such defenses considerably more difficult after John W. Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty of insanity in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan.

“Insanity defenses, I don’t care what kind of case it is, are extremely difficult to succeed,” said George Kendall, a lawyer who represents people on death row. It would have been particularly difficult in this case, several defense attorneys said, with one defendant appearing outspoken about his feelings of hatred and showing no obvious signs of debilitating psychosis.

But when it comes to deciding whether someone should be executed, Mr Kendall said, evidence of serious mental illness could give one or more jurors serious reservations – which could be enough for the defence, as the death penalty must be passed unanimously.

In 2015, a jury rejected the insanity defense of James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured dozens more at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and found him guilty of all charges. The jury then ruled that he had acted with aggravated cruelty and was eligible for a death sentence. But after a month of testimonies about Mr. Holmes’ struggles with mental illness, that same jury was split on whether he should be executed. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“While jurors rejected the idea that Mr. Holmes met the narrow legal definition of insanity,” his public defenders wrote in a 2016 article in the Denver Law Review, “the experts on the case agreed that Mr. Holmes terrible crime had he not been mentally ill.