American Robert Powers was convicted of committing the most deadly attack on Jews in the history of the United States in 2018 by targeting a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and he faces the possibility of the death penalty.

The extraordinary trial has now entered a new phase during which it will be decided whether Powers will be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Fifty-year-old Robert Powers was accused of killing 11 people in October 2018 at the "Tree of Life" synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the northeastern United States.

Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania said the jury deliberated for five hours to reach this verdict.

Powers was found "guilty" of the 63 charges against him.

In addition to deeming the accused guilty, the bet in this two-stage trial focuses on the death penalty that may be issued by the US federal judiciary.

The white truck driver initially pleaded not guilty before his lawyers offered to plead guilty in exchange for a guarantee that he would not be sentenced to death, but the US Department of Justice refused.

On October 27, 2018, Powers stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh armed with three handguns and a semi-automatic assault rifle. He opened fire shouting "All Jews must die" and killed 11 people, including a 97-year-old woman, during Saturday prayers in a historic Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh, in the attack that resulted in the largest number of victims against Jews in the United States.

Prior to that, Powers had posted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant messages on a far-right social network.

The then US President, Republican Donald Trump, called for the imposition of the death penalty on Robert Powers, which was followed by the Ministry of Justice and confirmed after the term of Democratic President Joe Biden began on January 20, 2021.

But candidate Biden pledged in 2020 to abolish the death penalty at the national level, so this trial revived the controversy over this penalty, which is still applied in a number of US states.

In early 2019, the federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh said he would seek the death penalty for Robert Powers, citing his "no remorse" and "hatred and contempt" for Jews.

And his lawyer, Judy Clark, admitted that her client was indeed the man who shot the Jews. "There is no point in looking for meaning in an act of insanity," she said, trying to save Powers' life rather than asserting his innocence.

The trial comes against the backdrop of escalating racist and anti-Semitic acts in the United States, which have reached their highest level in 30 years, according to FBI figures published by The Washington Post in April.

The American organization to combat anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League, said that in 2021, the country witnessed a record number of 2,717 anti-Semitic acts of assault, verbal attacks, and material damage, an increase of 34 percent over a year.

The same organization counted 3,697 anti-Semitic acts in 2022, an increase of 36 percent in one year and unprecedented since 1979, according to the Washington Post.

The United States has the largest number of Jews in the world, after Israel.

And the Pew Research Center reported that the number of adult Jews in the United States reached about 5.8 million in 2020, in addition to another 2.8 million adults whose parents are Jewish.