Jurors begin deliberations in the first phase of the trial for the Pittsburgh synagogue

After three weeks of heartbreaking testimony, the prosecution and defense delivered closing arguments on Thursday in the first phase of the federal trial against the man accused of carrying out the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the country’s history.

Robert Bowers, 50, the man charged with the October 2018 murder of 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, faces the death penalty if convicted.

The stage of the trial that concluded in federal court here on Thursday was to determine whether Mr Bowers was guilty, and the outcome of this stage of the proceedings is not significantly in doubt. The defense admitted in both its opening statement and closing argument that “there is no doubt” that Mr Bowers planned and carried out the massacre, although his lawyers argued that the motivation for his actions may not meet the elements of some of the 63 federal charges.

The question at the heart of the case has long been whether Mr Bowers, whose charge has been charged 11 times with killing people because of their religion, should be sentenced to death. If the jury finds him guilty, the sentence that awaits him will be discussed before the jury in the coming weeks.

On Thursday, prosecutors got to work first, painting a poignant portrait of the horror that unfolded on the morning of October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life Synagogue, where three congregations — Tree of Life, New Light, and Dor Hadash — gathered for Services.

Mary J. Hahn, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, recounted the frenzy, from the arrival of the regular suitors to the moment, less than an hour and a half later, when Mr. Bowers crawled out of a bullet — riddled classroom after a shootout with police officers. By then, 11 people had been killed and six wounded, a carnage Ms. Hahn described in excruciating detail, her story accompanied by terrified 911 call recordings and graphic crime scene photos.

“The defendant has turned a sacred house of worship into a hunting ground,” Ms. Hahn said.

To support the government’s claim that Mr Bowers had acted out of a “cold and calculating” hatred, the prosecution described a deluge of vehemently anti-Semitic posts he wrote and shared on Gab.com, a social media site, describing the Holocaust and called for genocide.

“The defendant is committed to the extermination of Jews,” Ms Hahn said. “That was what drove him to act.”

In a closing argument much shorter than the government’s, Elisa Long, a federal public defender, began by acknowledging “the devastation, loss and unbearable grief” caused by Mr. Bowers, emphasizing that there is “no excuse , no justification”. .”

His social media posts clearly reflected hatred of Jews, she said. But she pointed out that in many of the posts before the attack, Mr Bowers had become “almost particularly focused” on HIAS, a Jewish agency that helps resettle refugees in the United States, which Mr Bowers believed led to the “genocide”. of white people.

Mr Bowers indicated on social media that he chose the synagogue because Dor Hadash, who had participated in HIAS events, worshiped there. “In his mind he had to kill Jews who supported HIAS because they brought in immigrants who committed genocide against children,” Ms Long said. “None of this makes any sense, none of this is true, but it’s what Mr. Bowers thought was real and true.”

Some of the federal offenses Mr Bowers is charged with – that he had acted with a conscious intent to interfere with the exercise of religious worship – would not apply, Ms Long said, if he acted primarily from an “irrational belief that he had to stop refugees.

She admitted that looking so closely at the specifics of the law in this way was “not very satisfying” given the magnitude of the loss he had caused. But, she said, Mr Bowers “should be held accountable for the crimes he has committed, but not held for the crimes he has not committed.”

In the plaintiff’s rebuttal, Eric G. Olshan, who was sworn in this week as the new U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, was blunt: “The defendant hated Jews,” he said. “He had many reasons, but it all boiled down to one thing: he hated Jews.

Just before 2:30 p.m., the jury went into deliberation, as carts full of evidence were wheeled into the back of the courtroom. If Mr. Bowers is found guilty, the jury will first have to decide whether he is eligible to be sentenced to death for the crimes he was convicted of. If the jurors determine he qualifies, they will weigh whether a death sentence is warranted. The testimonies and arguments on these issues are expected to last about six weeks.