Death Penalty News

Mr Mangione, 28, is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO ​Brian Thompson outside a hotel in Midtown in December 2024 Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down a health insurance executive on a Manhattan sidewalk, is for now withdrawing plans to introduce evidence at trial that he was undergoing an extreme mental health crisis at the time of the ​ alleged killing, according to a Friday court filing.

Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the federal death penalty trial of Payton Gendron, who is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in state court to carrying out the racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 that killed 10 Black people and injured three others. The upcoming proceedings relate to separate federal charges, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and jurors could ultimately decide whether Gendron is executed or remains in prison for life. Here are three key takeaways as the next phase of proceedings gets underway:

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The fate of the man who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022 will be determined in the city where the tragedy occurred. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo on Tuesday denied a motion to move the federal death penalty trial for Payton Gendron to Rochester.  Attorneys for Gendron had sought the change of venue, arguing the court would be unable to seat a fair and impartial jury due to "pervasive news coverage" in the Buffalo area.

Federal prosecutors say they will not appeal a judge's ruling that tossed capital punishment charge against accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer The accused killer's life will be spared after federal prosecutors said Friday they will not appeal a judge's ruling to quash capital punishment against him. In a letter, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District said it accepts U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett‘s Jan. 30 decision to dismiss a death penalty-eligible murder charge against Mangione, who is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson Dec. 4, 2024.

Every year, thousands of prisoners in the U.S. are placed in solitary confinement, where they endure isolation, abuse, and mental suffering . This practice might soon become rarer for some inmates in Oklahoma, thanks to the efforts of activists in the state. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oklahoma announced that the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester had ended the practice of indefinite solitary confinement for "the vast majority" of death row prisoners.

NEW YORK – Luigi Mangione’s lawyers urged a federal judge in New York on Sept 20 to block prosecutors from seeking the death penalty for their client, who is charged with killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. In a court filing, Mangione’s lawyers argued that US Justice Department officials should be precluded from seeking the death penalty because of actions that had violated his due process rights. They said these included “staging a dehumanising, unconstitutional ‘perp walk’ where he was televised, videotaped and photographed clambering out of a helicopter in shackles on his way to his initial appearance”.

A federal judge on Thursday declined to dismiss capital firearms charges against a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in Buffalo in 2022.  Federal attorneys for Payton Gendron, 22, had argued that the 10 firearms offenses should be dismissed for lack of a legal basis, or failure to state an offense.  Gendron's public defenders contended the charges should have been dropped because a person can violate the Hate Crimes Act in ways that do not require use of force, including an act of self-harm, and as a consequence, a violation of the statute is not categorically a crime of violence. 

A federal judge has denied another motion from the defense of Payton Gendron, the man who killed 10 Black people in a mass shooting at a Buffalo Tops supermarket in May 2022, to allow federal prosecutors to continue seeking the death penalty. An 18-year-old Payton Gendron wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others in what authorities described as “racially motivated violent extremism.” The gunman wore body armor and military-style clothing during the attack on mostly Black shoppers and workers at Tops Friendly Markets. For at least two minutes, he broadcast the shooting live on the streaming platform Twitch before the service ended his transmission.

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A New Jersey man was convicted Friday of attempted murder for stabbing author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage in 2022. Jurors delivered the verdict after deliberating for less than two hours, also finding Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of assault for wounding a man who was on the Chautauqua Institution stage with Rushdie at the time. Matar ran up to Rushdie as he was about to speak on Aug. 12, 2022, and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the 77-year-old prizewinning novelist blind in one eye.

The man charged with stabbing writer Sir Salman Rushdie is facing trial in the US, with jury selection starting on Tuesday. Hadi Matar is charged with attempted murder and assault over the August 2022 incident that left Mr Rushdie blind in one eye. Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial at Chautauqua County Court in New York state, which was delayed twice, will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give evidence and face the accused in court.

BUFFALO — Lawyers for the shooter who killed 10 people at a Tops grocery store in 2022 have asked for a federal court order exempting him from the death penalty because he was 18 years old at the time of the racist mass shooting. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. Since that ruling carved out an exemption for people under 18, the science of late-adolescent brain development has advanced markedly, according to the public defense lawyers for Payton Gendron.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The man responsible for the racially-motivated mass shooting at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo is due back in federal court on Tuesday morning. Federal prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against Payton Gendron, the White supremacist who killed 10 Black people in the mass shooting on May 14, 2022.

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, they said in a court filing Friday.  Payton Gendron, 20, is already serving a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack.

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Relatives of victims of a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket have been called to federal court Friday for a “substantial update” in the legal case against the gunman, their attorney said. The meeting between Department of Justice representatives and victims of Payton Gendron will take place ahead of a previously scheduled afternoon status conference, attorney Terrence Connors said. Connors represents relatives of some of the 10 Black people killed and three other people wounded in the May 14, 2022, attack.

There’s still no decision on whether the federal government will seek the death penalty for the man who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo Tops grocery store on May 14, 2022. In a status conference Tuesday morning, prosecutors said the question of the death penalty has recently moved to the Office of the U.S. Deputy Attorney General.  That’s the next step before it goes to the attorney general, who makes the final decision on seeking the death penalty. 

Should Payton Gendron be executed for his racist massacre of 10 Black people last year at a Buffalo supermarket? Should he be strapped to a gurney and a fatal chemical cocktail pumped into his veins, shutting down his heart? Or should he spend the remainder of his life behind bars with no opportunity for freedom? It would likely be decades; he is now only 20 years old. Locally, the decision is being closely monitored by those who suffered the most — the families of the murdered victims. "The victims in this case will have differing views on this issue," the defense lawyers for Gendron wrote in court papers. "Some may support a capital prosecution. Others may, instead, prefer the criminal case to be resolved expeditiously with a sentence of life without parole while they pursue civil remedies to bring accountability to others."

A New York man who was convicted 47 years ago of a rape he didn’t commit was freed this week after new DNA testing proved his innocence and pointed to another suspect who has now confessed to the crime, authorities said. Leonard Mack was found guilty of rape and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon after being accused of raping a high school girl in Greenburgh, N.Y., in 1975, per a statement from the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization that works to vindicate the wrongly convicted. Mack, who is a Vietnam War veteran and has lived with his wife in South Carolina for nearly 21 years, spent more than seven years in state prison for the crime.

Defense attorneys for Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron say the Department of Justice is moving forward with the decision-making process to determine if their client could face a death sentence. Gendron shot and killed 10 Black people at Tops on Jefferson Avenue in May 2022. His defense attorneys are expecting to meet with the DOJ Capital Case Committee in September, where they will present mitigating evidence to show why they think the U.S. attorney general should not seek the death penalty as part of the federal sentence. They are also working to reverse a scheduling order set at the last hearing, requiring them to file all non-death penalty related motions by Aug. 31.

It’s the question in Payton Gendron’s federal case that has everyone wondering: Will the U.S. attorney general seek the death penalty for the Buffalo mass shooter who killed 10 people and wounded three others at a Tops grocery store on May 14, 2022? But, according to the judge handling pretrial matters in the case, it’s not a question that should keep everyone waiting. So U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. last month pressed forward by setting deadlines for pretrial motions and responses by prosecutors and Gendron’s federal public defenders – over the defense team’s objections.

Saipov will  serve his sentence at the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado NEW YORK (AP) — An unrepentant and defiant Islamic extremist received 10 life sentences and another 260 years in prison on Wednesday for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017, as a judge decried his “callous and cowardly” crimes. “The conduct in this case is among the worst, if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” said U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, as he announced a sentence designed to underscore the severity of the terrorist attack Sayfullo Saipov claimed he carried out on behalf of the Islamic State group. A life sentence was mandatory after a jury rejected the death penalty in March, but prosecutors had asked Broderick to impose eight consecutive life sentences and two concurrent life sentences. They also wanted an extra 260 years to send a stern message to other like-minded terrorists. And that's what the judge did. Broderick cited the defiance...