"Never Again": Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter Sentenced to Die. Jews Against the Death Penalty Respond

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : Experiencing that began to change my heart from someone who, growing up, believed in the death penalty to thinking again about it.
47% : And when people who espouse white supremacist, antisemitic and bigoted views pick up weapons and use them to kill, or to try to kill, people because of their faith, our office and our partners in law enforcement will hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law each and every time.
45% : And if it were me experiencing that pain, I indeed might be before you advocating for a death penalty.
44% : We know that the death penalty condemns the society that enacts it infinitely more than any human being that it condemns to death.
44% : Jews Against the Death Penalty know this viscerally.
44% : And that is why I say that the death penalty condemns the society that enacts it infinitely more than any individual that it condemns to death.
43% : And that would reflect the cross-section of the Jewish community when it comes to views on the death penalty.
42% : Jews Against the Death Penalty.
42% : We know -- we know -- that the death penalty is not the same as the unparalleled conflagration that was the Shoah.
42% : And so, that would, to me, say that if there were jurors who were selected, you would at least get at least one, if not many more, who would have recognized that the death penalty is an abomination, and would not have voted for it for Robert Bowers.
42% : Jews Against the Death Penalty.
41% : Jews Against the Death Penalty, that it is the law that is wrong.
41% : The problem, again, is not that we did not punish him to the full extent of the law; the problem is that the law is wrong in offering this inhumane punishment, which 70% of nations in the world -- 70% -- have recognized as a violation of human rights, including Ghana, the country of Ghana, which just this past week abolished the death penalty while this trial was going on.
41% :Let it be known that, indeed, there are many in the Jewish community, as you've mentioned before, who do support the death penalty.
41% : Ours is L'Chaim, "to life," Jews Against the Death Penalty.
40% : Traditional Judaism does have a place for the death penalty, albeit with prodigious safeguards to prevent anyone who is innocent from being executed.
40% : Let there begin a group that says Jews for the Death Penalty, L'Mavet, which means "to death."
38% : This death penalty sentence for Bowers is the first for federal prosecutors in the Biden administration, which has imposed a moratorium on executions.
36% : Well, it was something that I learned throughout my life, but the main experience was my experience as a prison chaplain, working in Canada as a prison chaplain, where the death penalty was not on the books, and meeting and getting to know individuals who would have qualified for the death penalty in other states in the United States, and perhaps federally, and seeing how they changed.
35% : But it wasn't until I started corresponding with people regularly, over letter and nowadays over email daily, with people in line for execution, that I witnessed firsthand the psychological torture that's inherent in any death penalty.
35% : That often excludes Blacks, Jews and Catholics, who are more often than not against the death penalty, so then they won't serve on juries in a case that doesn't even necessarily go for the death penalty.
34% : In death penalty trials, potential jurors must confirm to prosecutors that they're willing to impose the death penalty as part of a jury selection process called "death qualification."
33% : I have opposed the death penalty for a long time, and I led the fight in Maryland to abolish the death penalty.
32% : And then, when I came to learn more about it and to see how hard the Jewish tradition made it to enact the death penalty and to see how horrifically applied it is in a racist and fundamentally unjust manner, I began to see how wrong it was.
32% : Florida, we see this Pandora's box opening now for the death penalty for crimes that don't involve killing, and for the death penalty when there's a nonunanimous jury.
26% : People may not be aware that in death penalty cases, something we pointed out at the beginning, the prospective jurors have to be for the death penalty, even if in the end they don't give the death penalty to the person.
18% : And it opens the door to proposals that we see in the states here for the death penalty now for abortion, and countries like Uganda, that are now -- have the, quote-unquote, "kill the gays" law, the death penalty for homosexual acts.

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