Robert Blecker: Pittsburgh synagogue massacre is a crime that deserves death penalty

The U.S. Justice Department made the right decision when it announced Monday that it will seek the death penalty against Robert Bowers, the man charged with murdering 11 Jews gathered in prayer at a Pittsburgh synagogue last Oct. 27.

According to police, Bowers told them “I want to kill Jews.” The horrendous massacre he is accused of carrying out, motivated by virulent anti-Semitism, cries out for capital punishment. Justice simply demands it.

Bowers, 46, has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

ALLEGED PITTSBURGH SYNAGOGUE GUNMAN TO FACE DEATH PENALTY

The carnage in Pittsburgh shocked our nation and much of the world. Whether the victims are Jews in a synagogue, African-Americans in a church, or Muslims in a mosque, we expect and have largely witnessed the common outrage from all decent people, whatever their color, whatever their creed.

The profound collective anguish that sweeps across America after atrocities such as this transcends race, gender, ethnicity and politics.

After all, “in a well-governed state, citizens, like limbs on a single body, should feel and resent one another’s injuries,” Solon, the great Greek lawgiver, declared 2,500 years ago.

This mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh, which was the deadliest anti-Semitic act of violence in American history, has produced an eerie silence about the appropriate punishment from most so-called “abolitionists” – opponents of the death penalty who routinely plead for the life of a murderer, however heinous the crime.

Over several decades, I have spent thousands of hours inside maximum security prisons and on death rows. I have interviewed convicted murderers to identify the worst of the worst among them and thus separate those murderers who deserve to die from those who don’t.

During my visits, the daily lives of lifers in prison – spared the death they arguably deserved – appalled me.

Inside maximum security prisons, those sentenced to life without parole form friendships, play ball, eat ice cream and watch movies – simple pleasures their victims will never enjoy. It may not be a great life – but it’s a life they greatly prefer to the alternative, as their low suicide rate shows.

Inside maximum security prisons, those sentenced to life without parole form friendships, play ball, eat ice cream and watch movies – simple pleasures their victims will never enjoy.

Typically, after notorious killings many abolitionist news organizations have cast the death penalty in a thoroughly negative light, as a barbaric relic that has no place in modern society.

Yet most people – whatever their general political persuasion, however sensitive they are to problems with class or race bias in the criminal justice system – know intuitively and feel certain morally that some vicious murderers do deserve to die. As a society, we have an obligation to kill them once they have been convicted and exhausted all appeals.

Death penalty opponents have long distorted and largely diminished public support by asking questions such as: “Are you in favor of the death penalty for someone convicted of murder?” Depending upon the year, a majority or at least a plurality of Americans still say they favor capital punishment for all murderers.

I don’t agree. I would reserve society’s ultimate punishment only for the worst of the worst of the worst.

Evil exists in the extremes, as Aristotle taught us.  In this case, by randomly killing Jews at prayer, the mass murderer managed to combine the worst of two extremes – a passionate hatred for a people based on their religion, and a cold and callous indifference as to who within that group he would kill.

Thus, instead of asking the vague generic question of whether we should respond with death for murder, suppose pollsters asked more specific questions about the worst killers among us:

Should Dylann Roof – the white supremacist who entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine black congregants peacefully worshipping – live or die? He received a death sentence for his conviction in federal court.

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Should Joshua Komisarjevski – who sexually abused an 11-year-old girl, posted cell phone photos of her and then tied her to her bed, poured gasoline over her and burned her alive – live or die? He was convicted of the 2007 triple murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters – 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Mikaela. A jury sentenced him to death, but Connecticut abolished its death penalty and he now is serving a life prison sentence without parole.

Should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – who placed a bomb next to a child at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and coldly calculated to kill and maim as many people as possible – live or die? A jury sentenced him to death for the 2013 bombing that killed three people and injured several hundred.

These vicious killers violated our sanctuaries and randomly destroyed innocent victims in what should be safe and sacred spaces.

Ask the public the question concretely and the ethical answer emerges clearly: A vast majority – including those who publicly oppose the death penalty because they don’t trust our criminal justice system to get it right – intuitively know that morally these killers deserve to die.

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We who call for proportional punishment justify the death penalty not because it can deter other vicious killers; not because once we’ve captured these murderers we have no other way to keep us safe; and not because we can’t imagine how we could rehabilitate them. Those of us who believe in retributive justice find these justifications ultimately irrelevant.

Today we tolerate too little and hate too much. But unfortunately, there is a time to hate, and there are people whom we should detest. They deserve to die and we should kill them – as soon as legally possible.