On Thursday (Aug. 3), one day after a jury unanimously decided that Robert Bowers should face the death penalty for gunning down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, a U.S. district judge formally sentenced Bowers to die for the worst antisemitic attack in American history.
But it will take years and likely decades for the sentence to be carried out, if it happens at all.
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That reluctance to mete out the ultimate punishment reflects divisions among the nation’s religious groups, too. A 2014 PRRI survey showed that most religious groups are split on the death penalty. When asked which punishment they prefer for people convicted of murder, slightly more religious Americans (48%) said they favored life in prison with no chance of parole; 44% said they favored the death penalty.
American Jews were among the least likely to support the death penalty in that survey, with 57% saying they preferred life in prison.
That was before the Pittsburgh shooting.
Source: For many Pittsburgh Jews, Robert Bowers deserves the death penalty