What to Know as the Tree of Life Massacre Trial Begins

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : Some members of Dor Hadash created a nonprofit to lobby for new gun laws.
45% : But family members of nine of the 11 victims wrote in a letter to The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle last year that accepting a plea from Mr. Bowers, thus avoiding a trial and the possibility of his execution, would be letting him "have the easy way out.""His crimes deserve the death penalty," they wrote.
44% : The government has rebutted these arguments by insisting that there are factors in this case, such as Mr. Bowers's open antisemitism and his decision to attack during a worship service, "that make the death penalty specifically warranted here."
41% : In a filing this year, defense lawyers argued that under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the Justice Department had been arbitrary in deciding whether or not to pursue capital punishment.
40% : Mr. Bowers's lawyers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully challenged the government's intention to seek the death penalty.
40% :What have the congregations' members said about seeking the death penalty?
40% : The rabbi of New Light and members of Dor Hadash have publicly urged the government not to pursue the death penalty, an opposition that was motivated, they said in letters and speeches, by religious and ethical principles as well as concerns about the effects of a prolonged trial on already traumatized people.
38% : They cited hundreds of other murder cases in which Mr. Garland had elected not to seek the death penalty, including the 2019 mass shooting by an anti-immigrant extremist in a Walmart in El Paso.

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