Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is rumored to have national political ambitions, claims he reversed himself to oppose the death penalty after talking to families of victims of the Tree of Life mass shooting, but 9 of the 11 victims’ families say they support the death penalty.
In 2018, in one of the deadliest attacks motivated by antisemitism in American history, a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during a morning worship service, killing 11 members of the three congregations that met there.
Nearly one year after the shooting, federal prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty for alleged shooter Robert Bowers, who faces a 63-count indictment. At the time, Shapiro was Pennsylvania’s attorney general and told the public “the killer deserved to be put to death.”
“For more than a decade, including when I assumed office as Attorney General, I believed that the death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous crimes – but that it was, indeed, a just punishment for those crimes,” Shapiro told an activist crowd at Mosaic Community Church in West Philadelphia on Feb. 16.
Now governor, Shapiro announced mid-February that he won’t just extend his predecessor Tom Wolf’s moratorium on execution warrants, he will also work with the state’s General Assembly to wipe the death penalty from Pennsylvania law “for good.” He claimed his flip-flop would “make our system more fair and more just” and clear his conscience after his son asked him why it’s okay
