Judge denies motion to move trial in Tree of Life shooting case

A federal judge on Friday denied a request to move the trial of the man charged with killing 11 people at a Squirrel Hill synagogue in 2018.

Defense attorneys for Robert Bowers filed a nearly 3,900 page change-of venue motion in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in January, alleging that media coverage of the attack, as well as rallies and events in Squirrel Hill, and the large outpouring of support for the community afterward, would make it impossible for him to get a fair trial.

The U.S. Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, opposed the request.

In a seven-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville denied the request for a change of venue.

“In assessing whether a particular matter presents such a rare, extreme case, a court is to assess the totality of the circumstances,” he wrote.

Among those circumstances, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that consideration must be given to the amount of time elapsed from the incident in question to trial; whether media attention has declined over time; the characteristics of the community and the content of news coverage.

In the Bowers case, the court wrote, the crime was more than three years ago and media coverage has lessened since the attack.

Bowers is accused of killing 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue building on Wilkins Avenue on Oct. 27, 2018. The synagogue housed congregations from Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light.

As part of the defense request to move the trial, they hired a jury research firm that assessed more than 1,200 print media stories from the day of the shooting through Oct. 23, 2021.

The firm concluded that “the presumption of innocence has been threatened and a presumption of death has been established.”

However, Colville cited precedent which states that juror exposure to news coverage alone does not deprive a defendant of his right to a fair trial.

“At this stage of the proceedings, and considering all pertinent factors individually and together, the court concludes that a presumption of prejudice and consequent change of venue are not warranted,” Colville wrote.

He found that the publicity in the case is not “the type of relentless, saturating, and blatantly prejudicial exposure that warrants the relief sought.”

Further, Colville noted that, as of 2020 census data, jurors in the Western District of Pennsylvania’s citizen voting age population are pulled from more than 2.1 million people.

“Given this large, diverse pool of potential jurors, the suggestion that 12 impartial individuals could not be empanelled is hard to sustain,” the judge said.