Attorneys for a white gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket want to move his death penalty-eligible trial to New York City, writing in a court filing that it would be difficult to seat a diverse and impartial jury in the upstate city.
About 85% of Buffalo’s Black residents live in East Buffalo, where the shooting occurred, Payton Gendron’s lawyers wrote Monday, and many would be prevented from serving on the jury because of ties to the case.
“If the verdict in this case is to carry any moral authority, it should be delivered by a diverse group of citizens. But, given the history of segregation in Buffalo, that is exceedingly unlikely” if the case is tried in Buffalo, they said.
The filing also cited the hundreds of local news stories that have been published since the May 2022 attack at the Tops Friendly Market.
Gendron carefully planned and carried out the shooting with a semiautomatic rifle “to prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar acts,” according to a criminal complaint.
A portable camera strapped to his tactical-style helmet livestreamed as Gendron roamed the parking lot and aisles of the store, firing on shoppers and employees.
Those killed ranged in age from 32 to 86. Three people were wounded and dozens of others in and outside the neighborhood’s only grocery store escaped injury.
Citing the “outsized number” of people directly impacted by the shooting, Gendron’s lawyers suggested moving the trial to federal court in New York City, “a jurisdiction that is far enough from the local media market to be less impacted by it.”
The district “also has sufficient minority representation that has not been directly impacted by the shooting and its aftermath that a diverse and representative jury should be able to be selected,” the filing says.
The US Attorney’s office in Buffalo did not immediately comment.
Gendron is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty in November 2022 to multiple state charges, including murder.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland last year announced the government would seek the death penalty in a parallel federal case charging him with hate crimes and weapons counts.
Gendron’s attorneys, in an earlier filing, argued that Gendron should be exempt from the death penalty because he was 18 years old at the time of the shooting, an age when the brain is still developing. That motion is pending.
The trial is scheduled to start in September.
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