Death Penalty News

Eight defense attorneys who represented the man who killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 were paid $745,000 to defend him against federal hate crimes and weapons charges, according to a document filed in federal court this week.  Patrick Crusius, who will turn 27 later this month, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in El Paso in 2023 to 45 counts of committing hate crimes and 45 counts of using a firearm to kill or commit violence. He pleaded guilty after the U.S. Justice Department decided not to seek the death penalty, and he was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama to 90 consecutive life terms in prison. 

El Paso County taxpayers paid almost $4 million for the defense and $1.9 million for the prosecution of the man who gunned down 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, county records show. More than $2 million of that went to experts hired since 2019 by the defense team representing Patrick Crusius, now 26, who pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon last month after District Attorney James Montoya decided not to seek the death penalty . The gunman, who said he attacked the Cielo Vista Walmart in August 2019 to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Patrick Crusius had acknowledged he targeted Hispanics on Aug. 3, 2019, when he opened fire in the store crowded with weekend shoppers from the U.S. and Mexico in the border city of El Paso. The Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting “Mexican” shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, was sentenced to 23 consecutive life sentences, after he pleaded guilty in state court Monday morning. Patrick Crusius accepted a plea deal offered by the El Paso District Attorney’s office in return for not pursuing the death penalty. District Attorney James Montoya said he offered the deal after a request from the majority of the families of those killed, in trying to bring this case to a close.

The El Paso County district attorney announced Tuesday that Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in a 2019 racist attack at a Walmart near the U.S.-Mexico border, would avoid the death penalty under a new plea offer . The decision marks the end of a yearslong legal battle, but the victims’ families are divided by the decision. District Attorney James Montoya, who took office in January, said the decision was primarily driven by victims’ families seeking closure. “This is about allowing the families of the 23 victims who lost their lives on that horrific day — and the 22 wounded — to finally have resolution in our court system,” Montoya stated.

Patrick Crusius, who has admitted to killing 23 people and wounding 22 others in a racist mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, will no longer face the death penalty, El Paso Matters has learned. District Attorney James Montoya, who took office on Jan. 1, called family members of those killed on Monday to inform them he wouldn’t seek the death penalty in the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting, multiple family members told El Paso Matters. The family members asked not to be identified because of a gag order in place since 2022 that prohibited lawyers and potential witnesses from discussing the case with the media.

As El Pasoans gather for the fifth anniversary of the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart, the state of Texas' death penalty case against the gunman continues to languish in legal maneuvering and a judge's gag order. The case has been delayed in state court for several reasons, mainly because state prosecutors and defense attorneys are continuing a years-long battle over how to handle the massive amount of evidence in the case.

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.

President Joseph Biden's stated opposition to the death penalty is running counter to his administration's decision on the fate of the racist who murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. "It's really out of synch with what Biden said during his campaign," said Karen Pita Loor, a clinical law professor at Boston University who has written of the Department of Justice's decision to seek the death penalty in another case.

On successive days last week, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump and a petit jury sentenced Robert Bowers to die. Something about the immediate juxtaposition of these two events had my head spinning. I can’t really explain it, and unlike my other essays, I don’t have a particular claim I want to establish or argument I want to advance in these 1300 words. It’s more an occasion to reflect on how we use the criminal law and what we hope it will accomplish. I hope readers will excuse the tentativeness in my writing. At one level, the two events seem so different as to make comparisons insulting. Donald Trump has been charged with attempting to subvert the democratic process by interfering with the result of the 2020 presidential election; Robert Bowers was sentenced to die for killing eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. I recognize and acknowledge the obvious differences even as I write these words. But there is...

Earlier this month, family members of some of the 23 people killed and 22 people injured by a mass shooter at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 confronted the killer for the first time in a federal court. They’d waited nearly four years. Some were barely able to speak through tears. “I still remember everything so clearly, even though I have tried to erase it from my memory,” one teenager said, according to media reports. They should not bear these memories alone. Against the waves of gun violence that seem to regularly beat against this country, we have called for a vigil of memory, testimony and witnessing. At times we have mourned alongside communities. Other times we have called for action. Steady oars in angry waters.

CHICAGO — (AP) — Two separate shootings 2,000 miles (3,218 kilometers) apart. One killed 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The other killed 23 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Both were motivated by racial hate. Both involved gunmen who later claimed mental illness. But earlier this year, the Justice Department authorized the death penalty only for the case in Pittsburgh, where jurors will soon answer the weightiest of questions: Should Robert Bowers be put to death? Bowers' trial is in the penalty phase after his June conviction for the 2018 antisemitic attack. A federal judge last Friday gave Patrick Crusius the maximum available sentence for the 2019 Walmart attack on Hispanics: life in prison. He pleaded guilty after the department took a death sentence off the table.

The admitted white supremacist who was sentenced to life in prison by a federal court for the Walmart mass shooting is now in state custody and remains in El Paso as he awaits a state trial in connection with the attack, officials said. El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks announced Tuesday during a news conference that Patrick Crusius, 24, was transferred about 1 p.m. Tuesday from federal custody to state custody – the first major step to moving forward with the state of Texas' case against the gunman.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty. Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases. Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the sentence was read. U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white Texas gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in 2019 returns to court Wednesday for sentencing in a mass shooting that targeted Hispanic shoppers in the border city of El Paso. Patrick Crusius, 24, is set to receive multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Although the federal government did not seek the death penalty, Texas prosecutors have not taken lethal injection off the table under a separate case in state court. Investigators say the shooting was preceded by Crusius posting a racist screed online.

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — A federal judge is considering a joint motion to push back the sentencing hearing for the El Paso Walmart mass shooter. Defense attorneys for Patrick Crusius and United States prosecutors asked to have the sentencing start on July 5 at 9 a.m. The hearing is currently scheduled to begin on June 30. "This request is not for the purpose of delay, but rather to lessen the logistical burden on those wishing to participate and to allow for the greatest number of participants to attend the entirety of the proceedings," the joint motion filed Saturday stated. If United States District Judge David C. Guaderrama signs off on the motion, the sentencing will proceed as follows: On July 5, the pre-sentence report will be discussed and if any objections are announced, they will be resolved, the document states.

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks on Thursday shared details about the timeline to get the El Paso Walmart shooter state trial started after the federal case ends. Hicks explained what needs to happen once Patrick Crusius receives his sentence in federal court. "After that sentencing [in federal court] there is a paperwork process. Once that paperwork process is complete the shooter [Crusius] will come into state custody and we will proceed with our case in state custody,” said Hicks. After Crusius is sentenced, it could take anywhere from two to four weeks for him to transition into state custody, Hicks explained. "The number one priority of my office has been to put the Walmart case back on track and I’m very confident that we have done that, that we are prepared to proceed with prosecution on the case and that once he is back in our custody, looks like it will be sometime late June maybe early August, will be ready to proceed with the pros...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Rejon Taylor hoped the election of Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to campaign on a pledge to end the death penalty, would mean a more sympathetic look at his claims that racial bias and other trial errors landed him on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. But two years on, Justice Department attorneys under Biden are fighting the Black man's efforts to reverse his 2008 death sentence for killing a white restaurateur as hard as they did under Donald Trump, who oversaw 13 executions in his presidency's final months. "Every legal means they have available they're using to fight us," said the 38-year-old's lawyer, Kelley Henry. "It's business as usual." Death penalty opponents expected Biden to act within weeks of taking office to fulfill his 2020 campaign promise to end capital punishment on the federal level and to work at ending it in states that still carry out executions. Instead, Biden has taken no steps toward fulfil...

The first federal capital case tried under President Joe Biden ended with a split among jurors that means the life of an Islamic extremist who killed eight people in a New York City will be spared. It came at a rare federal death penalty trial in a state without the death penalty. That Biden’s Justice Department continued to pursue the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, who used a truck to mow down pedestrians and cyclists on a popular bike path, was a surprise to many given Biden’s opposition to capital punishment and his 2016 campaign pledge to end it federally. The jury’s failure to reach a unanimous decision means Saipov receives an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the October 2017 attack.

U.S. no longer seeking death in Sjodin murder U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday that they will no longer seek the death penalty for a Minnesota man already on death row but awaiting resentencing for the kidnapping and killing of college student Dru Sjodin in 2003 — a case that led to changes in sex offender registration laws. U.S. Attorney Mac Schneider in North Dakota filed a notice with the court withdrawing his effort to seek the death penalty for Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. — a move he told The Associated Press he had to make after he was “straightforwardly directed by” Attorney General Merrick Garland to do so.

Accused El Paso Walmart shooter pleads guilty to 90 federal charges including hate crimes. EL PASO, Texas (KTEP) - The man accused of killing 23 people at an El Paso Walmart pleaded guilty to 90 federal charges including murder and hate crimes. Dressed in a dark blue prison jumpsuit, wearing a facemask and shackled, Patrick Crusius, showed little emotion as he listened to each one of the names of the 23 people gunned down at a Walmart in 2019 or injured in the attack. He answered guilty to each charge of murder and attempted murder as well as hate crimes.