BUFFALO, NY — 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 life sentence without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack.
New York does not have the death penalty, but the Justice Department had the option to seek the death penalty in a separate federal hate crimes case. Gendron had promised to plead guilty in that case if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
In a message announcing the decision to seek the death penalty, Trini Ross, the U.S. attorney for Western New York, wrote that Gendron had chosen the supermarket “to maximize the number of black victims.”
This is the first time that Attorney General Merrick Garland has authorized a new execution of the death penalty. Under his leadership, the Justice Department has allowed the continuation of two death penalty cases and withdrawn from pursuing capital punishment in more than two dozen cases.
There was no immediate comment from the victims’ families or prosecutors.
The Justice Department has made federal death penalty cases a rarity since the election of President Joe Biden, a Democrat who opposes the death penalty. Garland has imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures. While the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has used it sparingly.
It successfully sought the death penalty for an anti-Semitic gunman who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Last year it also went ahead with an attempt to get the death penalty against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, although the lack of a unanimous jury meant prosecution resulted in a life sentence.
The Justice Department has refused to enforce the death penalty in other mass killings. It went on to seek the execution of a gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
Relatives of the Buffalo victims have expressed mixed opinions about whether they believe federal prosecutors should seek the death penalty in the case.
On May 14, 2022, Gendron attacked shoppers and workers with a semi-automatic rifle at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo after driving more than 200 miles from his home in rural Conklin, New York.
He chose the company because of its location in a predominantly black neighborhood and streamed the massacre live via 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 injured but survived.
The gun Gendron fired was marked with racial slurs and phrases, including “The Great Replacement,” a reference to a conspiracy theory that there is a plot to reduce the influence of white people.
Mark Talley, whose 63-year-old mother, Geraldine Talley, was murdered, has said he would rather see Gendron locked up for life in the community he attacked than executed.
“I want that pain to haunt him every second of every day for the rest of his life,” he said after Gendron’s guilty plea in court.
___
Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz in New York and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington