Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed ten black people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. According to a recent court filing, the US Department of Justice has decided to seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron. He was 19 when he carried out a racist, murderous attack on shoppers in a predominantly black neighborhood, devastating the community. according to a recent court filing.
“United States believes the circumstances in Counts 11–20 of the Indictment are such that, in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified,” the filing said.
Payton Gendron was sentenced to life in prison without parole on state charges in February 2023
He was originally sentenced to life in prison last February, following a sentencing hearing in which he was forced to listen to relatives of his victims express their grief and rage.
Payton Gendron’s sentencing hearing was interrupted when a man in the audience charged at him and was quickly restrained.
Gendron, whose hatred was fueled by racist conspiracy theories he discovered online, pleaded guilty in November 2022 to hate-motivated murder and domestic terrorism, both of which carried an automatic life sentence.
Gendron was sentenced to life in prison without parole on state charges in February 2023 after pleading guilty to 15 counts of domestic terrorism motivated by hatred, murder, and attempted murder.
During his tenure, Garland pursued two death penalty cases: one against Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people with a truck on a Manhattan bike path in October 2017, and the second against Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in a shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018. A jury declined to sentence Saipov to death, but Bowers was sentenced to death.
Both of these cases were carried over from the previous administration, but Garland declared a moratorium on the death penalty in July 2021.