Death Penalty News

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The sentencing phase of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial is set to begin next week and jurors will decide whether or not the convicted gunman should face the death penalty. Last week, Robert Bowers was convicted and found guilty of all 63 federal charges he was facing for the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018 when he killed 11 worshippers from three different congregations, Tree of Life, Dor Hadash, and New Light. It was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger were all shot and killed that morning. 

PITTSBURGH (AP) — One by one over the past two weeks, members of Jewish congregations in Pittsburgh have come to the witness stand in federal court and relived the horror of that October morning, when a gunman used high-powered weapons to kill 11 worshippers and badly injure others. Police officers have testified about responding to a scene of horrific carnage and immediately coming under fire themselves, some suffering life-altering wounds from a gunman raging against Jews in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. All of this is being entered fastidiously into the record for the benefit of the jurors and alternates in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh. So are hundreds of court exhibits showing the aftermath of the violent invasion of sacred worship that day in the Tree of Life synagogue building.

The Bureau of Prisons did not comment on Kaczynski's health conditions Unabomber Ted Kaczynski has been transferred from the Colorado supermax prison to a federal medical facility in North Carolina - a sign the infamous domestic terrorist's health is deteriorating. Kaczynski, 79 - a mathematics prodigy who gained notoriety for his manifesto after sending a series of bombs in the mail over 17 years that killed three people and injured 23 - has been moved to FMC Butner, which is known for treating inmates with significant health problems.  He was transferred on December 14 from supermax prison Florence-ADMAX - the 'Alcatraz of the Rockies' - where he has been serving multiple life sentences. The prison houses [inmates] such as World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. His condition is unknown and the Bureau of Prisons refused to tell his brother David Kaczynski about any ailments. David found out about his brother's ...

Scharlette Holdman Scharlette Holdman, pioneering foe of the death penalty, dies at 70. Scharlette Holdman, whose pioneering work with defense lawyers contributed to the decline of the death penalty nationwide, and whose clients included Ted Kaczynski, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, died Wednesday. She was 70. In the tight-knit world of defense lawyers who focus on the death penalty, Holdman was a revered figure, a non-lawyer responsible for the development of mitigating evidence, aimed at convincing jurors to spare the lives of men and women whose crimes, at first blush, only elicited disgust. It is now common practice for capital defense lawyers to hire "mitigation specialists," and in recent years such evidence has often convinced district attorneys not to seek the death penalty in the first place. "Her enthusiasm and strength of personality inspired hundreds of young people to join the struggle against the death penalty," said Judy C...