BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Jury selection began Tuesday in the federal hate crime trial of a man who admitted to killing 10 black people in a New York supermarket massacre in 2022, a case that could lead to a rare death sentence.
Payton Gendron is already spend your life in prison after pleading guilty to murder charges and tearfully renouncing his white supremacist views. He now faces a trial in federal court resulting 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 openly predicted a conviction when speaking to potential jurors 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 attorneys and took notes as attorneys and U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilado interviewed people. A recurring question from the defense team: If you were the king of an island, would you get the death penalty?
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.
A teacher was fired after saying that white nationalism, anti-Semitism and mass shootings were a “growing cancer” and that a “life for a life would be a just result” for extreme crimes.
The selection process could last several days. The judge said a trial would likely not begin until December and could extend into February.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Associated Press that Gendron’s lawyers will try to reveal at trial “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.
Racist conspiracy theories played a role in the attack
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. “the great theory of replacement” that people of color will 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 Saltera 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.
Chaney’s son, Wayne Jones Sr., said thinking about his absence every day is a reason he doesn’t want to see the death penalty.
“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?
Crimes against Black people remain at the top of hate crime data
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 2015 Buffalo shootings and church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white shooter killed nine black churchgoers, show how online radicalization has also made them subjects of terrorism.
Buffalo Common Council member Zeneta Everhart, whose son, Zaire Goodman, 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 Gendron’s execution, but said he hoped the trial would expose “the radicalization, social media and societal ills” that drive people to hate-based violence.
“These are the things that I care about,” he said.
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Tang reported from Phoenix. Ed White in Detroit contributed.
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