Post by M. Hawbaker on Aug 19, 2019 12:02:52 GMT
A rabbi of one of the three Pittsburgh congregations targeted in a mass shooting last year at Tree of Life synagogue is asking prosecutors not to seek the death penalty for the gunman.
Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, of New Light Congregation, lost three of his congregants after alleged shooter Robert Bowers opened fire inside the Pittsburgh synagogue last October as the three congregations met there. Eleven people died, making it the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in U.S. history.
Prosecutors are currently deliberating whether to seek the death penalty in the case against Bowers. The suspect, an avowed anti-Semite, has pleaded not guilty to a 63-count indictment, including murder as a hate crime. Still, Perlman, who survived the massacre by hiding in a storage closet, is imploring federal prosecutors to not seek the death penalty in this case.
“We are still attending to our wounds, both physical and emotional, and I don’t want to see them opened any more,” he wrote in the letter first reported on by Religion News Service. “A drawn out and difficult death penalty trial would be a disaster with witnesses and attorneys dredging up horrifying drama and giving this killer the media attention he does not deserve.”
