Law enforcement officials at the scene of a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street in Buffalo, NY, on Sunday, May 15, 2022.
Photo by Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images.
June 11, 2024 Story by: Editor
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Attorneys representing Payton Gendron, the Tops supermarket mass shooter, have filed motions seeking the dismissal of the federal case against him.
In the documents submitted on Monday, the defense argued that additional federal prosecution is unnecessary for justice. Gendron has already received a life sentence without parole, along with an additional 90 years, for killing 10 Black individuals and injuring three others at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue on May 14, 2022.
While prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty, the defense contends that Gendron’s age at the time of the crime, 18, should exempt him from capital punishment. The motion references a May 2017 United States Sentencing Commission study, which defines youthful offenders as those under 25 at the time of sentencing.
“The inclusion of young adults in the definition of youthful offenders is informed by recent case law and neuroscience research, which recognizes that full reasoning skills and abilities may not develop until around age 25,” the report states.
Gendron, who drove over three hours from Conklin, N.Y., to Buffalo to carry out the attack, targeted a predominantly Black neighborhood. He pleaded guilty to state charges in November 2022 and was sentenced in February 2023. His federal trial is tentatively set for September 8, 2025.
Currently, Gendron is 20 years old and incarcerated at Livingston County Jail in Geneseo.
The defense cited procedural delays as a reason why pursuing a federal case is not in the public’s interest, stating, “The state has guaranteed that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. The state has effectively prosecuted Gendron, condemning the racial violence and ensuring justice. The federal prosecution offers no additional explanation for its necessity and will only prolong judicial resolution for years.”
The documents list over 500 capital defendants authorized since the late 1980s, with more than 250 of them aged 25 or younger at the time of their offenses. Besides Gendron, the latest crime committed by a person under 25 resulting in an authorized capital defendant occurred in February 2017. The last such defendant under age 21 was Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19 at the time of the 2013 bombings, sentenced to death in 2015 but not yet executed.”The new scientific consensus and evolving community standards indicate that individuals in their developmental period into their early 20s – especially those like Payton Gendron, who was 18 at the time – should be treated differently than fully developed adults under the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment death-penalty jurisprudence,” the motion asserts. “The science is clear: People under 21 are not yet adults and should not be punished as such.” Source: WIVB 4
