In a closing argument that was far shorter than the government’s, Elisa Long, a federal public defender, began by acknowledging “the devastation, the loss and the unbearable grief” caused by Mr. Bowers, and emphasized there was “no excuse, no justification.”
His social media posts clearly reflected hatred for Jews, she said. But she pointed out that in many of the posts before the attack, Mr. Bowers had become “almost singularly focused” on HIAS, a Jewish agency that helps resettle refugees in the United States, which Mr. Bowers believed was leading to the “genocide” of white people.
Mr. Bowers indicated on social media that he had chosen the synagogue because Dor Hadash, which had participated in HIAS events, worshiped there. “In his mind he needed to kill Jews who supported HIAS because they were bringing in immigrants who were committing genocide against children,” Ms. Long said. “None of this makes any sense, none of this is true, but it is what Mr. Bowers believed to be real and true.”
Some of the federal offenses Mr. Bowers is charged with — that he had acted with a conscious intent to obstruct the exercise of religious worship — would not, Ms. Long said, apply if he was primarily acting out of an “irrational” belief that he needed to stop refugees.
To look so closely at the particulars of the law in this way, she granted, was “not terribly satisfying” given the scale of loss that he had caused. But, she said, Mr. Bowers needed “to be held accountable for the crimes he did commit, but not be held for the crimes he did not commit.”
In the prosecution’s rebuttal, Eric G. Olshan, who was sworn in as the new U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania this week, was blunt: “The defendant hated Jews,” he said. “He had many reasons but it all boiled down to one thing: He hated Jews.
The jury went into deliberations a little before 2:30 p.m., as carts full of evidence were wheeled into the back of the courtroom. If Mr. Bowers is found guilty, the jury will then have to decide first whether he is eligible to be sentenced to death for the crimes he is convicted of. If the jurors determine he is eligible, they will then weigh whether a death sentence is warranted. The testimony and arguments about these issues are expected to last for about six weeks.