Top 10 Mass Killer Not Too Young To Be Sentenced To Death

Prosecutors on Friday rejected the idea that a federal judge can exempt May 14 shooter Payton Gendron from the death penalty because he was 18 when he gunned down 10 people at a Tops grocery store in 2022.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional for people under 18 at the time of the crimes, but drew a “bright line” that offered no such protection to people 18 or older.

“This court has no role in expanding that line,” federal prosecutors said in their court filing. “Only the Supreme Court or Congress can now change that.”

At the time of the racist shooting in Buffalo, Gendron was 18 years, 10 months and 28 days old, 328 days older than the limit set by the Supreme Court decision.

“Simply put, the defendant is asking this court to do something it simply cannot do,” said prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo and attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department in Washington.

Last month, federal public defenders representing Gendron asked U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo to exempt him from the death penalty, saying the science of brain development in late adolescence has advanced significantly since the Supreme Court’s decision.

More recent research shows that people in their late teens and early 20s “bear a strong resemblance to young people under the age of 18 in their decision-making and behavioral abilities,” according to the defense brief.

That argument failed to overturn the death sentence of Dylann Roof, who was 21 in 2015 when he killed nine members of a black congregation at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

A federal appeals court also rejected the age-limit argument for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was 19 when the attack killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon’s finish line in 2013.

In both Roof and Tsarnaev’s cases, attorneys submitted studies identical or similar to those cited by Gendron’s attorneys, prosecutors said.

Arguments about Gendron’s age and brain development are expected to be presented to the jury as mitigating factors at a capital sentencing hearing, according to a court filing by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Tripi and Brett A. Harvey, along with U.S. Justice Department attorneys Laura B. Gilson and Michael S. Warbel.

On May 14, 2022, Gendron targeted Black people at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue in a racist attack that he livestreamed online. He shot and killed 10 Black people and injured one Black person and two White people.

A federal grand jury issued a 27-count indictment against Gendron, including 10 counts of hate crimes resulting in death. The U.S. Justice Department announced in January that it would seek the death penalty. Gendron was previously sentenced by an Erie County judge to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted second-degree murder, among other charges.

Last month, his lawyers also asked Vilardo to issue an order declaring that the federal death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and to quash the government’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty.

In their response Friday, prosecutors said the defense’s claim was not new.

“Courts have routinely rejected such arguments in nearly every capital case brought in federal court over the past 20 years,” according to the prosecution’s filing.

Gendron’s lawyers called it arbitrary for the federal government to spare some defendants and target Gendron.

The government declined to seek the death penalty against Patrick Crusius, the El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooter who killed 23 people; Anthony Jordan, a St. Louis-area drug dealer responsible for at least 12 drug-related killings; and Jairo and Alexi Saenz, leaders of a Long Island MS-13 gang responsible for directing eight killings, according to Gendron’s attorneys.

In the filing Friday, prosecutors said whether the murder defendants faced the death penalty in other cases is not evidence of a constitutional violation.

“The appeal to consistency in outcomes made by Gendron’s legal team is a plea for a false consistency that would deprive decision-makers of their ability to exercise the very discretion that benefits individual defendants,” prosecutors said.

Gendron’s attorneys — Assistant Federal Public Defender Sonya A. Zoghlin, Senior Assistant Federal Public Defender Anne M. Burger, Senior Trial Attorney MaryBeth Covert, and Julie Brain — also asked to dismiss Gendron’s indictment based on what they say is the unconstitutionality of the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The law makes it an offense to intentionally cause bodily injury to a person because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion or national origin.

Defense attorneys have questioned federal prosecutors’ interest in re-prosecuting Gendron, given that he has already been convicted of state charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 90 years.

“New York State has thereby ensured that he will spend the rest of his life locked up in one of its prisons and die there,” Gendron’s attorneys said. “Not only has it been established that the State is willing and able to prosecute Payton Gendron to the fullest extent possible, condemn acts of racial violence in the strongest possible terms, and ensure that justice is served – it has done so.”

In their response Friday, prosecutors said the defense’s argument boiled down to this: “He urges this court to hold that the authority to prosecute racially motivated violent crimes — including mass shootings of black people — belongs exclusively to the states. But neither the Constitution nor the precedent supports such a claim.”

Vilardo has set a federal trial date for September 8, 2025.