Pittsburgh Synagogue Trial Is Proving the Obvious, but Ultimately Focused on the Death Penalty

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.

A prayer book torn by gunfire. A bullet-damaged glass door. A prayer shawl on a floor, a yarmulke on a stair, left where they had fallen from worshippers during the attack.

And photos of bodies shattered by high-powered weaponry images so sickening that the court is not making them public.