Pittsburgh synagogue killer has extensive history of mental illness — defense expert
Defense for Robert Bowers trying to persuade jury to spare his life as US federal prosecutors seek death sentence for truck driver convicted of murdering 11 Jewish congregants
PITTSBURGH — A gunman who massacred 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue has a “very serious mental health history” from childhood and a “markedly abnormal” brain, a defense expert testified Wednesday in the penalty phase of the killer’s trial.
Defense lawyers for Robert Bowers are trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, while federal prosecutors are seeking a death sentence for the 50-year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, who was convicted this month in the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history.
Dr. Siddhartha Nadkarni, who performed a neurological examination of Bowers in 2021, took the stand as a defense expert on Wednesday and told jurors that he diagnosed Bowers with schizophrenia, a serious brain disorder whose symptoms include delusions and hallucinations, as well as epilepsy.
“I think he was living on the margins” at the time of the attack, said Nadkarni, a New Jersey-based neurologist. “He was isolated.”
Bowers’ lawyers are trying to show that his ability to form intent to kill was impaired by mental illness. The defense presented evidence that he had attempted suicide multiple times since adolescence, threw flammable liquid on his mother and tried to ignite it when he was 13, and was involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment at least three times, most recently in 2004.
Bowers had a “flat, rigid affect” when he was examined by Nadkarni, the neurologist told jurors. He also had a delusion that ink was leaching from his prison uniform into his body and making his prison wristband change color, Nadkarni said.
Prosecutors say it was antisemitism that motivated Bowers to kill. He ranted incessantly on social media about his hatred of Jewish people before the 2018 attack and told police at the scene that “all these Jews need to die.”
Under cross-examination, Nadkarni said Bowers was not “incapable” of planning the attack, but said “his reasons for planning it out are unreliable in his brain.”
On Tuesday, three local doctors who reviewed the results of various brain scans of Bowers told the jury they found them to be largely normal with some signs of possible seizures or other problems.
Bowers killed members of three congregations as Sabbath services got underway at Tree of Life synagogue, in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.
Prosecutor Troy Rivetti, in his opening statement Monday, said the government was prepared to rebut any mental-health defense.
Bowers clearly formed the intent to kill everyone he could find in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018, Rivetti said. He called the magnitude of Bowers’ crimes staggering.
“He came to kill,” the prosecutor said. “The defendant entered the Tree of Life synagogue, a sacred place to gather and pray, and he murdered 11 innocent worshipers.”
The sentencing portion of Bowers’ trial comes as the death penalty has become a more prominent topic in the 2024 presidential race. The federal death penalty was not a high-profile issue until former US president Donald Trump’s administration resumed executions in 2020, after a 17-year hiatus. With 13 inmates put to death in his last months in office, Trump oversaw more federal executions than any president in more than 120 years.
US President Joe Biden said during his 2020 campaign that he would work to end capital punishment at the federal level and in states that still use it, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has paused executions to review policies and procedures. But federal prosecutors continue to work to uphold already-issued death sentences and to pursue the death penalty for crimes that are eligible, as in Bowers’ case.
The jury convicted Bowers on June 16, after five hours of deliberations, on all of the 63 counts he faced. The same jurors now must decide whether Bowers is eligible for the death penalty.
Before the trial, Bowers’ attorneys offered a guilty plea in return for a life sentence, which prosecutors rejected. Most of the victims’ relatives support seeking the death penalty.
