Buffalo Tops shooter files last-minute bid to avoid death penalty

Payton Gendron, who is already serving life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, is asking a federal judge to throw out the case that could send him to death row.

Defense attorneys filed the motion Monday — a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin — seeking to dismiss Gendron’s federal indictment. They argued that Black residents are underrepresented in the jury pool for New York’s Western District, according to WIVB and WKBW.

Gendron drove more than 200 miles to Buffalo on May 14, 2022, and opened fire at a Tops Friendly Markets store on Jefferson Avenue, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Ten Black people were killed and three others were injured in the attack.

This is a Sixth Amendment challenge aimed at getting the indictment dismissed. Success would force the government to start over (practical delay or end to the current capital case); failure preserves the issue for appeal.

Gendron pleaded guilty to state charges in 2023 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The federal case centers on whether Gendron should also face the death penalty. Gendron has pleaded not guilty to two dozen federal hate crime charges and more than a dozen firearms charges.

Federal Judge Lawrence Vilardo has previously rejected defense efforts to move the trial out of Buffalo and other challenges to the federal case, WIVB reported.

Gendron mentioned Syracuse while discussing potential targets online before the shooting. He wrote that he was looking for an area with a larger Black population than his hometown region of Binghamton.

Eventually, he settled on the Buffalo Tops. In his manifesto, he states that it had the highest Black population percentage and “isn’t that far away.” The ZIP Code where the shooting occurred is 78% Black.

Source: syracuse.com, Desj, October 13, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

Death Penalty News For a World without the Death Penalty

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

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Opinion | I Know Christa Pike’s Medical History. What Tennessee Did Is Unforgivable.

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