Editorial: Big cases defy change of venue
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Robert Bowers still is moving slowly toward trial for the October 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
On Monday, defense attorneys filed a motion in the case. In nearly 3,900 pages, they detailed the reasons that a federal judge should give the case a change of venue, saying it is all but impossible for Bowers to receive a fair trial for the deaths of 11 members of the synagogue’s three congregations and the wounding of others.
But on Saturday, another shooting illustrated that changing the venue might not matter, because Pittsburgh isn’t the only place that has been touched by the kind of violence that erupted that autumn morning.
It was around 9 p.m. Saturday that a standoff finally ended in Colleyville, Texas, where Malik Faisal Akram, 44, held four people, including a rabbi, hostage at Congregation Beth Israel. The standoff lasted almost 11 hours.
There is a kinship between the synagogues now, separate from the faith they share. They are also scenes where that faith was tested in ways it should never be tested.
They are, nonetheless, also very different.
Texas and Pennsylvania are a world apart in everything from climate to football to politics. Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in Pennsylvania and is a name used as common shorthand to talk about manufacturing and labor. Colleyville has about 26,000 residents and is a Fort Worth suburb that few outside Texas could identify.
They aren’t the only places touched by violence, let alone antisemitic violence, in recent years. Poway, Calif., was the site of another synagogue shooting barely six months after Tree of Life. One person died. Three were injured.
Synagogue leaders such as Tree of Life’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers and Congregation Beth Israel’s Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker have trained to be attacked. Both men had security training, like teachers and students nationwide have done in preparation for school shootings.
So where would be a good venue for Bowers’ trial? Everyone in Pennsylvania knows what happened in Squirrel Hill. The 1,200 news stories included in the court filing are not a revelation.
But cities and people across the country stood with Pittsburgh when the shooting occurred. They stood with Poway. They stand with Colleyville now. There is no pocket of the country where the story wasn’t spread.
A fair trial requires jurors who are prepared to hear the facts and follow the law. They don’t need to be ignorant to what has happened around them.