Death penalty opponents make one more plea to President Biden to spare life of Pittsburgh synagogue shooter

Jonathan D. Salant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Dec 26, 2024

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WASHINGTON — Death penalty opponents on Thursday launched a new effort to spare Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers and two others remaining on death row from being executed.

Death Penalty Action submitted a letter to the White House signed by almost 450 organizations, asking President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of the three federal inmates facing execution plus four others on military death row.

Biden on Monday granted clemency to 37 federal prisoners who were sentenced to death. That left just three people facing execution for federal crimes: Bowers; Dylann Roof — who killed nine worshippers at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, and who, like Bowers, espoused white supremacist and bigoted rhetoric before carrying out a mass killing — and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people.

"You said you granted clemency because you wanted to 'prevent the next administration from carrying out executions,'" the letter said. "This gives us hope. Unless you finish the job by granting clemency to the three men remaining on federal death row and extending your mercy to the four men on military death row, you will leave those seven men vulnerable to execution under Donald Trump's administration. This would seem counter to your intent."

Bowers was convicted in June 2023 of 63 federal charges and was sentenced to death in the Oct. 27, 2018, shooting at the Squirrel Hill synagogue housing three congregations — Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life. It was the worst antisemitic attack in American history.

The call for clemency gained new urgency following Trump's election last month. In the last year of Trump's first term in the White House, 13 federal prisoners were executed — more than in the previous eight decades combined, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Trump transition team called the commutations "Biden's sick Christmas gift to grieving families."

"The danger of leaving the death penalty as an available tool for Donald Trump to use cannot be overstated," said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action and co-founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty. "Donald Trump idolizes dictators and relishes dictator-like power. We are absolutely grateful for what President Biden has done, but we urge him to finish the job. Do not give Trump the power to execute anyone."

On Christmas Day, Trump used his Truth Social site to go after the 37 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted, falsely accusing Biden of pardoning them rather than sentencing them to life imprisonment without parole.

"To the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky 'souls' but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!" Trump said.