Buffalo Shooter’s Federal Hate Crimes Trial Begins
Jury selection began Tuesday in the federal hate crimes trial of Payton Gendron, the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 — a proceeding that could end with the death penalty even though New York state abolished capital punishment two decades ago. Gendron already is serving life in prison without parole on state charges, and his defense team is not disputing his guilt; the federal trial will effectively determine whether he is executed.
According to NBC News, Gendron faces more than two dozen federal charges tied to the attack. Because the defense is not contesting guilt, the federal trial will function less like a conventional guilt-or-innocence proceeding and more like a prolonged penalty phase focused on whether Gendron should be executed. As Buffalo Toronto Public Media reports, jury selection is expected to take weeks.
The Attack That Changed Buffalo
On May 14, 2022, a then-18-year-old Gendron drove more than 200 miles (320 km) from his home in Conklin, a predominantly white rural town, to Buffalo’s East Side. He fired roughly 60 shots from a semiautomatic rifle at employees and shoppers inside the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue, then livestreamed the assault and surrendered to police as he exited the store.
All 10 people killed were Black, ranging in age from 32 to 86. They included 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 Buffalo police officer working as a security guard. Three others were injured.
The attack is believed to be the deadliest hate-motivated shooting targeting Black people by a lone gunman in the last century. As The Guardian reported, video from the scene showed Gendron apologizing to a white store worker after shooting him in the leg — a detail that prosecutors say underscores the racial motive.
The Federal Case and the Death Penalty Question
Gendron pleaded guilty to all state charges in November 2022, including murder, murder as a hate crime and hate-motivated domestic terrorism, and was sentenced to life without parole in February 2023. A federal grand jury indicted him on a total of 27 counts, including 10 federal hate crime charges — one for each victim of the shooting, according to WHEC News10NBC.
Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. Justice Department decided in 2024 to seek a death sentence — the first capital case overseen by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had previously imposed a moratorium on federal executions. Gendron’s legal team relayed that he would plead guilty in the federal case only in exchange for a life sentence, but the Justice Department rejected the proposal.
The case illustrates the legal principle of dual sovereignty, which allows state and federal governments to prosecute the same conduct separately. As WHEC explained, even though New York banned the death penalty in 2004 and has not executed anyone since the 1960s, Gendron could still be sentenced to death under federal hate crime charges.
A Community Divided on Justice
Victims’ family members are not of one mind on whether Gendron should be executed — a split that has shaped the tone of the proceedings.
Wayne Jones, whose mother Celestine Chaney was killed, told the Associated Press he opposes the death penalty. “I really think that he should just sit and have to think about it year after year after year and just be miserable,” Jones said. “When I was younger, I probably was more prone to say ‘kill him.’ But, at this point, I mean, he’s still got well another 20-30 years of appeals.”
Others favor execution. Zeneta Everhart, a Buffalo Common Council member whose son Zaire survived being shot in the neck, said the attack amounted to domestic terrorism. “I’ve never been like out here like, ‘Yay! Go for the death penalty.’ That’s never been me,” she said. “Ten people died that day in an egregious way and in an awful, terrible, traumatic way.” She added that if Gendron is not sentenced to death, “I know that justice will be served.”
Garnell Whitfield, whose 86-year-old mother Ruth Whitfield was killed, said he has no firm position on capital punishment because “this is the federal government doing what they deem they have to do.” He said he hopes the trial reveals more about “the support that he might have had, the radicalization, social media and societal ills that caused people to hate and be violent that are inherent in our society.”
Gendron’s federal public defender office said in a statement that the defense will not contest his guilt. “Nothing will change the fact that Payton Gendron will die in prison,” the office said. “At trial, we will offer mitigating evidence about Payton that the jury needs to consider in making its decision.”
A Grim Backdrop of Hate Crime Data
The trial unfolds against a persistent pattern of anti-Black violence. Black people have been the “number one numerical target” in FBI hate crime data every year since the bureau began collecting statistics in 1991, according to hate crime analyst Brian Levin of the California Association of Human Relations Organizations. The record was 3,670 anti-Black bias incidents in 1996.
According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies reported more than 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025, nearly three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported a 7% decline in overall hate crime incidents from 2024 to 2025.
Levin told the AP that Gendron “fits the pattern of young, mostly white males undertaking targeted massacres which are then justified by manifestos, which are also part of a continuing chain that references prior attacks often but seeks to encourage future ones.” Investigators found Gendron promoted the baseless “great replacement theory” — the false claim that people of color will replace white people through higher birth rates and immigration — and wrote a white supremacist manifesto before the attack.
WHEC reported that an internet post allegedly tied to Gendron pinpointed a neighborhood in Rochester, New York, as a potential second target.
What to Watch
Jury selection is expected to take weeks, meaning the trial’s substantive phase may not begin until later this fall. Key questions remain: whether the jury will be seated from a region deeply familiar with the attack, how the defense’s mitigation case will be received, and whether any verdict will resolve the community’s divisions over capital punishment.
The case carries broader implications as well, testing how federal hate crime law applies when a state has turned away from executions. For the families of the 10 victims, the outcome will be measured less in legal precedent than in whether a long-awaited reckoning brings any measure of closure.