Murder, life and death

We have written several editorials about the racist Buffalo massacre when a gunman with a Bushmaster XM-15 .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle murdered 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket on May 14, 2022. And in not one of those editorials did we mention the killer’s name. We will not start now.

We will list the names of his 10 murdered victims: Roberta Drury, Pearl Young, Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Celestine Chaney, Aaron W. Salter Jr., Andre Mackniel, Margus Morrison, Katherine Massey and Geraldine Talley. There were also three other victims who survived their wounds.

The killer, who would turn 19 the month after the shooting, wrote a demented “manifesto” about being “a white man seeking to protect and serve my community, my people, my culture, and my race.”

His objective of the carefully planned assault that Saturday afternoon was to “Kill as many Blacks as possible,” “Avoid dying,” and “Spread ideals,” as he live-streamed his crime on the internet.

When one of his 60 bullets hit the white store manager in the leg, he said “sorry,” to that wounded victim as he continued to seek Blacks to murder.

According to the FBI special agent’s affidavit: “The rifle had various writings on it, including, but not limited to, the names of others who have committed mass shootings, racial slurs, the statement ‘Here’s your reparations!,’ and the phrase ‘The Great Replacement.’ “

And he was prepared, also having a 12-gauge shotgun, a loaded bolt-action rifle, and three loaded rifle magazines waiting in his car as backup weapons.

Charged with 25 felonies under New York State law, including 10 counts of first-degree murder and terrorism, he pleaded guilty to all charges six months later and last February was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But this case isn’t over, as a federal grand jury had indicted him with 27 counts and now the Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland have notified the court that they will seek the death penalty.

This is no ordinary crime and capital punishment, if a jury agrees, will be just.

The arguments against the death penalty, such as it being applied more frequently to Black or Brown defendants charged with killing whites, does not apply, as this is the opposition situation. Neither is there any risk of an innocent person being put to death. He did it, as was seen on his live stream and he willingly pleaded guilty.

Some terrorists deserve the death penalty. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death. Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death, as has the terrorist who murdered 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The government sought death for the ISIS terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, who murdered eight on the bike path in lower Manhattan, but the jury voted for life imprisonment.

As he wrote, the Buffalo killer wanted to kill as many Black people as he could, avoid dying and to spread his ideas.

He succeeded on the first goal. But he can still be thwarted on the other two should his life be extinguished by the state and his poisonous ideology be stopped rather than propagated.

The death penalty must be reserved for extraordinary circumstances. The Buffalo massacre is one of them.