(File Photo: Source for Photo: Police respond to an active shooter situation at the Tree of Life synagogue on Wildins Avenue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pa., on Saturday, October 27, 2018. (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette via AP)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) Attorneys for the man who shot and killed eleven people at the former Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh want his death sentence vacated and the chance for him to live out his days in jail. 

These attorneys made their case in a federal appeals court on Tuesday. 

A team of federal public defenders cited a bunch of reasons why a three-judge panel should give fifty-four-year-old Robert Gregory Bowers that chance, even though they conceded that Bowers had caused “profound and irreparable harm.”  

They not only that argued his death sentence should be vacated, but also that a new sentencing hearing would be held. 

Bowers is a resident of Baldwin who is currently spending his days waiting for execution on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.