(Jewish Group) Death Penalty Opponents Shouldn't Downplay Mass Shooter's Antisemitism

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes capital punishment in all cases, considering it an “intolerable denial of civil liberties [that] is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice.”

It was therefore unsurprising when Yasmin Cader and Jeffery Robinson—the current and past directors of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality—published an op-ed arguing against imposing the death penalty on Robert Bowers, the convicted murderer of eleven Jewish worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue.

Their argument is compelling, premised on the “morally bankrupt and inescapably racist” nature of the death penalty, and pointing out the one-sided judicial procedures that allow prosecutors to obtain a “death-qualified” jury.

As a long-time ACLU member, and former criminal defense attorney, I needed no convincing. Others in the Jewish community, however, understandably feel differently about punishing the perpetrator of the greatest massacre of Jews in U.S. history. Cader and Robinson would have been more persuasive to that audience if they had given more attention to the community’s concerns, instead of skipping past them.

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