BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Federal prosecutors announced on Friday that they plan to pursue the death penalty for a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket.
Payton Gendron, 20, is currently 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.
Although New York does not have capital punishment, the Justice Department had the option of seeking the death penalty in a separate federal hate crime case. Gendron made a plea deal and promised to plead guilty in that case if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
The decision to pursue the death penalty under President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is the first of its kind. Gendron drove over 200 miles from his home in rural Conklin, N.Y., to a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo’s largely Black East Side neighborhood, where he shot eight supermarket customers, the store security guard, and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store. Three people were wounded but survived.
In the court papers announcing the decision, Trini Ross, the U.S. attorney for western New York, cited the extensive planning that went into the shooting, including the choice of location, which she said was meant to “maximize the number of Black victims.”
Relatives of the victims have expressed mixed views on whether they thought federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty. An attorney for 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.
Federal death penalty cases have become a rarity since the election of Biden, a Democrat who opposes capital punishment. Under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has permitted the continuation of two capital prosecutions and withdrawn from pursuing death in more than two dozen cases.
Gendron carried out his attack on May 14, 2022, using a semi-automatic weapon marked with racial slurs and phrases including “The Great Replacement,” a reference to a conspiracy theory that there’s a plot to diminish the influence of White people.
Pamela Pritchett, whose 77-year-old mother, Pearl Young, was killed in the attack, said the mood was somber among family members of the victims. Gendron did not appear at a status conference held Friday afternoon.
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