CAIRO — An Egyptian judge sentenced 529 supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi to death Monday in an unprecedented verdict that shocked the nation and dashed any hopes that Egypt’s capricious judicial system would render justice to government opponents.

The case now goes before Egypt’s supreme religious authority, the Grand Mufti, the senior Islamic scholar here, for approval or rejection. It also will be reviewed by an appeals court, with both lawyers and other observers saying they expected the sentence would be overturned, as often happens in Egypt.

That did little, however, to ease the shock that swept across Egypt when the verdict was announced. While police brutality, torture and unfair verdicts are common practice in Egypt, a death sentence is not.

That so many would be sentenced to execution for the death of a single person is unprecedented in modern Egyptian history. According to Death Penalty Worldwide, a website created by Professor Sandra Babcock of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern Law School’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, only 709 people had received a death sentence in Egypt between 1980 to 2000. The last execution was in 2011.

“If you don’t die in the streets from weapons, you will die from the judge’s bench,” one of the lawyers, Yasser Zeidan, concluded after Monday’s verdict.

For comparison, a police officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison two weeks ago for the deaths of 37 prisoners who suffocated after officers threw tear gas into their police van, which was not designed to hold more than 22 prisoners.

In its daily briefing with reporters, the U.S. State Department said that it was “pretty shocked” by the ruling, which it said “defies logic,” and that U.S. officials would raise the case with Egyptian officials.

“There is no place for politically motivated convictions in a country that is moving toward democracy,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.

The verdict was handed down in Minya, a province in the middle of Egypt that is home to more Christians than any other province. The 529 defendants, who ranged in age from 20 to 40, were charged with killing a police officer, attempting to kill two others and destroying property when a mob stormed a police station last summer, when tensions over Morsi’s ouster were at their height.

Much of the violence had been aimed at Christians, whom Morsi’s supporters blamed for contributing to Morsi’s downfall. Hundreds of churches nationwide were attacked, and Minya was particularly devastated by the violence.

Lawyers who attended the two court sessions leading up to the verdict said the judge was angry with them for objecting to the level of security at the opening session.

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