Federal case in Buffalo supermarket shooting could bring death penalty
White supremacist gunman who killed 10 Black people in 2022 faces trial on hate crime charges.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, they said in a court filing Friday.
Payton Gendron, 20, is already serving a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after pleading guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack.
New York does not have capital punishment, but the Justice Department can seek the death penalty in its separate federal hate crime case.
Gendron had promised to plead guilty in the state case if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
In a notice announcing the decision to seek the death penalty, Trini Ross, U.S. attorney for western New York, wrote that Gendron had selected the supermarket “in order to maximize the number of Black victims.”
The notice cited a variety of factors for the decision, including what it said was substantial planning for the shooting and the decision to target at least one victim who was “particularly vulnerable due to old age and infirmity.”
Relatives of the victims had expressed mixed views on whether federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty. After meeting with prosecutors hours before a Friday hearing in the case, one of the relatives, Mark Talley, shared his thoughts.
“I’m not necessarily disappointed in the decision . ... It would have satisfied me more knowing he would have spent the rest of his life in prison being surrounded by the population of people he tried to kill,” said Talley, whose 63-year-old mother, Geraldine Talley, was one of Gendron’s victims.
“I would prefer he spend the rest of his life in prison suffering every day,” he added.
Several other family members of victims left without speaking.
The Justice Department has made federal death penalty cases a rarity since the election of President Biden, a Democrat who opposes capital punishment. This is the first time Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland has authorized a new pursuit of the death penalty. Under his leadership, the Justice Department has permitted the continuation of two capital prosecutions and withdrawn from pursuing death in more than two dozen cases.
Garland instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures. Although the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has done so sparingly.
The agency successfully sought the death penalty for an antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, in a case that had been authorized for the death penalty before Garland became attorney general.
The department also went ahead last year with an effort to get a death sentence for an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though the lack of a unanimous jury in his conviction resulted in a life sentence instead.
The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings, including in the case of a gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso.
On May 14, 2022, Gendron attacked shoppers and employees with a semiautomatic rifle at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo after driving more than 200 miles from his home in rural Conklin, N.Y.
He chose the business for its location in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and livestreamed the massacre from a camera attached to his tactical helmet.
The dead, who ranged in age from 32 to 86, included eight customers, the store security guard and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries. Three people were wounded but survived.
The rifle Gendron fired was marked with racial slurs and phrases such as “The Great Replacement,” a reference to the conspiracy theory that there’s a plot to diminish the influence of white people.