U.S. prosecutors said Jan. 12 they’re seeking the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the New York man who killed 10 people in a grocery store in 2022.
“A sentence of death is justified,” Trini Ross, the U.S. attorney for the western district of New York, said in a court filing.
Prosecutors cited a federal law that allows the death penalty for intentional killing and the intentional infliction of serious bodily injury.
That sentence was handed down by a state judge in February 2023. Mr. Gendron received his prison sentence after pleading guilty to state charges and apologizing for his actions.
New York has effectively been without capital punishment for 60 years, with zero executions since 1963.
A New York court in 2004 banned the death penalty, but federal prosecutors can still seek capital punishment for crimes that occur in the state.
Mr. Gendron gunned down 10 people inside a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo on May 14, 2022. Three other people were left wounded.
Authorities say Mr. Gendron, who is white, was racially motivated in the attack. All but two of the victims were black.
A federal grand jury indicted Mr. Gendron on firearm charges and violations of a hate crimes prevention act. According to the indictment, Mr. Gendron wrote in a manifesto that his goal was to “kill as many blacks as possible” because black people are “a large group of replacers.” He hoped the shooting would spread his beliefs.
Mr. Gendron live-streamed the shooting on Twitch, a social media platform.
“I did a terrible thing that day. I shot and killed people because they were black,” Mr. Gendron said at his sentencing.
Mr. Gendron “intentionally killed” the 10 people who died, opening him up to the death penalty, prosecutors wrote in the new brief.
He also intentionally inflicted serious bodily injury, intentionally participated in an act that resulted in death, and intentionally engaged in an act of violence even while knowing that the act created a grave risk of death to a person, prosecutors added.
Pause of Executions
In 2021, after President Joe Biden took office, the U.S. Department of Justice paused federal executions and has not yet resumed them. Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by President Biden, said officials wanted to review policies surrounding executions.Prosecutors have also stopped pursuing the death penalty in more than two dozen cases.
President Biden said while campaigning that he would abolish the federal death penalty, but he has not formally done so. Former President Donald Trump resumed federal executions during his term and has said on the campaign trail that he would execute drug dealers and human traffickers.
Relatives of the Buffalo victims—who ranged in age from 32 to 86—had expressed mixed views on whether they thought federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty. Mark Talley, whose 63-year-old mother, Geraldine Talley, was killed, said he “wasn’t necessarily disappointed” by the decision, even if he would have preferred Gendron spend his life behind bars.
“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,” Mr. Talley said.
In a joint statement, attorneys for some of victims’ relatives said the decision “provides a pathway to both relief and a measure of closure for the victims and their families.”
An attorney for Mr. Gendron, Sonya Zoghlin, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the government’s decision to seek the death penalty, noting that her client was 18 at the time of the shooting.
“Rather than a prolonged and traumatic capital prosecution, the efforts of the federal government would be better spent on combatting the forces that facilitated this terrible crime, including easy access to deadly weapons and the failure of social media companies to moderate the hateful rhetoric and images that circulate online,” Ms. Zoghlin said in a statement.
Prosecutors met Friday with several family members of victims before the decision to seek the death penalty was made public.
Pamela Pritchett, whose 77-year-old mother, Pearl Young, was killed in the attack, said the mood was somber.
“I will be scarred. Everybody, every family, the community of the East Side, we’re all gonna be scarred,” she said. “For me, my goal is to look at the scar and know that I am healed.”
