Federal prosecutors to seek death penalty for Buffalo mass shooter

Federal prosecutors announced Friday they will seek the death penalty against Payton Gendron, the teenage gunman who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo in 2022.

In a notice filed Friday morning, prosecutors said Gendron "expressed bias, hatred, and contempt toward Black persons and his animus toward Black persons played a role in the killings." It was the racially-motivated nature of his crimes, among other reasons, that factored into their decision to pursue the death penalty, they said.

Gendron, now 20, is already serving a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after he pleaded 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 had the option of seeking 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.

Relatives of the victims had expressed mixed views on whether they thought federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty. Before the decision was announced, several family members of victims met with prosecutors.

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.”

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Civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, along with attorneys Terry Connors and Fu Zimmermann, who represent several of the victims and families, released a statement Friday saying the decision points to relief and closure for victims' families.

“Today’s decision by the Department of Justice provides a pathway to both relief and a measure of closure for the victims and their families," the statement read. "They have been pleading for full justice for nearly two years, and today they are one step closer. We thank the DOJ for its diligence and for fighting for those whose lives were so tragically affected by this atrocity."

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.

“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,” Zoghlin said in a statement.

Gendron's federal case has not yet proceeded to trial.

How often does the DOJ seek the death penalty?

The Justice Department has made federal death penalty cases a rarity since the election of President Joe Biden, a Democrat who opposes capital punishment. Attorney General Merrick 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.

It successfully sought the death penalty for a antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. It also went ahead last year with an effort to get the death sentence against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.

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The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings. It passed on seeking the execution of a gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Relatives of the victims in Buffalo have expressed mixed views on whether they think federal prosecutors should pursue the death penalty in that case.

Mark Talley, whose 63-year-old mother, Geraldine Talley, was killed, said he’d rather Gendron be imprisoned for life in the community he attacked than be executed.

“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,” Talley said.

How did the Buffalo Tops shooting unfold?

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 (320 kilometers) from his home in rural Conklin, New York.

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 including “The Great Replacement,” a reference to a conspiracy theory that there’s a plot to diminish the influence of white people.

What is Gendron's background? Were any red flags raised?

When Gendron was a student at Susquehanna Valley High School in 2021, he made vague comments about committing a murder-suicide, former Broome County District Attorney Michael Korchak previously told the USA Today Network.

In the wake of Gendron's eventual decision to commit a massacre, questions have been raised about why his initial comments, made just one year prior to the mass shooting, did not cause officials to pursue a red flag order against him. Such an order would have prevented Gendron from legally acquiring a firearm.

Gendron, in fact, did end up legally purchasing the semiautomatic rifle that he used to commit the massacre from Vintage Firearms, in Endicott, near Binghamton. However, he modified the gun with an illegal high-capacity magazine.

Korchak said Gendron underwent a mental health evaluation at the time of his 2021 comments at Binghamton General Hospital, which cleared him of any danger.

Pursuing a red flag order “probably wasn’t appropriate at that time," Korchak said.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Payton Gendron to face death penalty for Buffalo mass shooting