Buffalo shooter faces federal death penalty charges
There have been new updates relating to the tragedy that left 13 people shot inside and around an east side Buffalo Tops Friendly Market in a premeditated hate crime on May 14, 2022. The shooter, a white male who was 18 years old at the time of the shooting, traveled several hours from his hometown of Conklin, New York, to an eastern Buffalo neighborhood known for having a predominantly black population. It is reported that Payton Gendron wore heavy tactical gear to protect himself and carried a semi-automatic rifle.
Before committing the acts that resulted in ten counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, Gendron posted a manifesto. Within it, he detailed a comprehensive plan to murder as many black people as possible. An NBC News article reporting on Gendron’s manifesto revealed that the document included racist and conspiratorial ideologies such as the “great replacement theory," racist and antisemitic memes, and a provided explanation for his hateful motivation to pick the shooting’s location. NBC also reported that “Gendron repeatedly cites Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist mass shooter who killed 51 people and injured 40 others at a Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque in 2019,” throughout the manifesto.
Similarly to Tarrant, Gendron wore a camera to livestream the crime which took the lives of ten black people, and injured three others. The footage was streamed live on Twitch in an attempt to inspire “others to commit similar attacks,” as alleged in the official complaint to the Department of Justice.
After pleading guilty to all charges, including homicide and domestic terrorism, Gendron was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole in New York state on Feb. 15, 2023. Yet, given the severe nature of the crime, Gendron also faces criminal charges at the federal level. The federal case opened on July 14, 2023, and the jury accused Gendron of several hate crime counts. It wasn’t until Jan. 12, 2024, however, that CBS News reported that federal prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for Gendron.
Even though New York is not among the twenty-one U.S. states with an active death penalty—having abolished the law in 2001—the federal government retains the right to enact capital punishment for crimes of homicide. This was declared in the Death Penalty Act of 1994. As such, Gendron must undergo a second trial process through the federal court system in order to bypass the state’s regulation surrounding the death penalty. Since he pleaded “not guilty” to the federal charges, his trial is set to take place starting on Sept. 8, 2025. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) noted that “this is the first capital case authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden Administration’s DOJ.”
The crime and charges of Gendron mirror those of Robert Bowers, a gunman who killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and was federally sentenced to death on several counts of hate crimes. Gendron’s trial is expected to be different due to his age, however, as Bowers was 46 years old at the time he committed the shooting, while Gendron was only 18.
The DPIC reported concerning the current case that, “on Jan. 11, 2024, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that late-adolescents aged 18, 19 and 20 were more like juveniles than adults because of their undeveloped brains.” Based on this court finding and several others of similar rulings, Gendron’s defense will use his age to argue against the most severe punishment.