Biden commutes most federal death sentences but leaves Tree of Life shooter on death row
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called last year for the abolishment of the death penalty even for those committing the most heinous crimes
The Tree of Life Synagogue on the first anniversary of the attack. Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh December 23, 2024
President Joe Biden announced Monday morning the commutation of 37 out of 40 federal death row sentences. Among the three inmates who remain on death row is Robert Bowers, sentenced last year for the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting that claimed the lives of 11 worshippers.
The massacre at the synagogue was the deadliest act of antisemitism in the nation’s history.
Bowers’ sentence was the first federal death sentence by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. The last executions were carried out during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland placed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021. Bowers joins Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine worshippers at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted for his involvement in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three.
Opponents of capital punishment have been urging Biden, who was once a longtime advocate for the death penalty, to use his final weeks in office to clear the federal death row before Trump, a staunch supporter of the death penalty, returns to office. “Guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president,” Biden said in a statement, “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Cantor Michael Zoosman, a co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, said Biden should have included Bowers in the commutations.
“We are against the death penalty in all cases, including for the Tree of Life shooter,” Zoosman said, quoting the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Zoosman added that by leaving the option open, “Biden sends an open invitation for the man-made Angel of Death to enter whenever the time is ripe, setting a precedent that inherently devalues human life.”
Last year, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, beseeched his state legislature to abolish the death penalty, even for those committing the most heinous crimes, crediting some families of Tree of Life victims for his stance. “They told me that even after all the pain and anguish, they did not want the killer put to death,” Shapiro said at the time, before the Bowers sentence was given. “He should spend the rest of his life in prison, they said, but the state should not take his life as punishment for him taking the lives of their loved ones. That moved me and that’s stayed with me.”
After Bowers was given the death stance in August 2023, Shapiro remained mum on the punishment and a Shapiro administration official said the governor’s evolved position on the death penalty stands.
Jewish tradition allows the death penalty in rare circumstances. The Torah outlines 36 offenses punishable by death, including murder, adultery, and idolatry. According to a 2014 poll, only a third of American Jews support capital punishment.
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