Terror trial could yield 1st death penalty in 60 Years

NEW YORK >> On Monday, U.S. prosecutors will ask 12 people to authorize a punishment that hasn’t been levied on a Manhattan defendant since 1963: death.

Sayfullo Saipov, 35, was convicted last month of fatally mowing down eight people as he raced a truck down a West Side bike path in 2017. Now comes the phase of his trial that will determine his punishment: The U.S. government wants to end Saipov’s life with a lethal injection.

To succeed, prosecutors must win a unanimous vote from the jurors, who will deliberate in a city that has been both a bastion of liberalism and a stage for repeated acts of terrorism. The clash over Saipov’s fate will test how a jury in the Southern District of New York — which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester and five other downstate counties — weighs crime against punishment two decades after 9/11.

The United States has a long history of capital punishment, but the percentage of people who support the death penalty has dwindled. At the state level, New York no longer has a death penalty, its central provision having been ruled unconstitutional in 2004.

But the federal government can still bring capital cases, which is why a jury will gather in a nondescript room in lower Manhattan to decide whether Saipov’s act of terror calls for the ultimate punishment.

New York is a global capital of commerce and culture, with 36% of its residents born abroad. Around the world, 70% of countries have banned the death penalty, including Belgium and Argentina, where six of the bike path victims were from, and Uzbekistan, Saipov’s native country.

“It’s a really tough question to say whether it’s morally right to exercise the death penalty or not, especially for your everyday person that lives in New York,” said Nick Buenaventura, 29, who stopped his Citi Bike last week to be interviewed near Watts and West streets, the scene of the attack. “To bear that weight — it’s a heavy decision.”

The Saipov jury faces a stark choice: If the jurors do not unanimously support his execution, he will receive life imprisonment without the chance of release.

The Southern District’s mix of cosmopolitan and rural areas and its diversity of race, ethnicity, financial status and political viewpoints would seemingly ensure defendants can have their cases heard by a cross-section of the community. In a death penalty case, however, the jury’s composition is tilted in the government’s favor, because people unalterably opposed to capital punishment are not allowed to sit on the jury.

Michael Mukasey, the attorney general under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009 and before that a longtime Southern District judge, thinks a death penalty could be imposed. “New York is famous as a place where people can be realistic in a hard-nosed way,” he said, adding, “With the spike in crime around the city, I would by no means bet the farm on it being impossible for a jury to return a death penalty verdict in this case.”

Saipov’s lawyers’ advantage is that they must persuade only a single juror to hold out. Rachel E. Barkow, a law professor and sentencing expert at New York University, said that could make it harder for the government to obtain a death penalty verdict.

“That’s difficult in any circumstance,” Barkow said. “It’s particularly difficult with a Southern District jury in Manhattan.”