Jury selection begins in federal hate crimes trial following Buffalo supermarket shooting

BUFFALO, New York — Jury selection began Tuesday in the federal hate crime trial of a man who admitted to killing 10 Black people in a 2022 New York supermarket massacre, a case that could lead to a rare death sentence.

Payton Gendron is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty to murder charges and tearfully renouncing his white supremacist views. He now faces a trial in federal court stemming from the same mass shooting. The stakes are high: if he is found guilty, the 23-year-old young man risks the death penalty.

The attack at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo is considered the deadliest hate-motivated shooting targeting black people in the United States by a lone gunman in the last century.

Gendron has pleaded not guilty to dozens of hate crimes and gun-related charges, although his defense attorneys do not dispute his guilt. One even predicted a conviction while speaking to a potential juror on Tuesday.

If Gendron is convicted, his lawyers will try to persuade jurors to spare him execution. Life imprisonment is usually the alternative.

“At trial, we will present mitigating evidence regarding Payton for the jury to consider in making its decision,” his attorneys said in a statement. “Nothing we say or do is intended to be disrespectful or insensitive to victims, survivors or their loved ones. »

Gendron spoke to his defense team and took notes while attorneys and U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilado interviewed people Tuesday. One person said they didn’t want to be on the jury, in part because of the stress of watching a video Gendron broadcast live during filming.

Another said other countries might respond to such an attack by “stoning” the offender. He said he could fairly weigh aggravating and mitigating factors if the trial reached the death penalty phase.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Associated Press that Gendron’s lawyers at trial will try to reveal “almost every aspect of his life before he committed his crime and even after he committed his crime” to try to keep him off death row.

On May 14, 2022, Gendron, then 18, drove more than 200 miles from Conklin, a predominantly white rural town, to Buffalo. He fired about 60 shots from a semi-automatic rifle at supermarket employees and shoppers. Video later revealed that Gendron apologized to a white store clerk after shooting him in the leg.

Investigators also discovered prior social media posts and other writings by Gendron dedicated to planning an attack to scare non-white and non-Christian people into leaving the United States. He promoted a baseless “great replacement theory” that people of color would replace whites through higher birth rates and immigration.

The victims killed were all black and aged 32 to 86. They were Celestine Chaney, Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young, Andre Mackneil, church deacon Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison and Aaron Salter, a retired police officer who worked as a security guard.

The Justice Department, under President Joe Biden, has decided in 2024 to seek the death penalty. The government later rejected an offer from Gendron to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

Still, Wayne Jones Sr., whose mother was killed, said thinking about Chaney’s absence every day is one reason he doesn’t want to see a death sentence.

“I really think he should just sit back and think about it year after year and just be unhappy,” Jones said. “When I was younger, I was probably more inclined to say ‘kill him.’ But, at this point, I mean, what does he have left, another 20, 30 years of appeal?

Black people have been the “No. 1 digital target” every year since the FBI began collecting data in 1991, said Brian Levin, a hate crimes analyst with the California Association of Human Relations Organizations.

According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement reported more than 2,800 incidents of hate crimes against Black people in 2025, nearly three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported a 7% drop in hate crime incidents between 2024 and 2025.

The Buffalo shootings and the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting, in which a white gunman killed nine black worshipers, show how online radicalization has also made them subjects of terrorism.

Buffalo Common Council member Zeneta Everhart, whose son, Zaire, survived the shooting but still has shrapnel in his body, said improving hate crimes may be the only deterrent.

“This is domestic terrorism,” Everhart said. “It’s important that we seek the death penalty in this case. But if he doesn’t get it, I know justice will be served.”

Garnell Whitfield lost his 86-year-old mother Ruth in the shooting. He had no opinion on whether Gendron should be executed because “it’s the federal government doing what they think they should do.”

Whitfield said he hoped the trial testimony would reveal more about “the support he (Gendron) may have received, the radicalization, social media and societal ills that caused people to hate and be violent that are inherent in our society” that preceded the killing.

“These are the things that I care about,” he said.

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Tang reported from Phoenix. Ed White in Detroit contributed.