Biden Administration Seeks Death Penalty for Buffalo Supermarket Shooter

Decision marks a departure from Biden's campaign promise to abolish the death penalty, sparking mixed reactions from victims' families.

Despite campaigning as a death penalty abolitionist, the Biden administration has decided to seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the 19-year-old who killed 10 people in a racially motivated shooting at a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022.
Gendron's lawyer had offered a guilty plea to the federal charges if the death penalty was taken off the table, but this was rejected by the Justice Department.
Gendron, who was motivated by white supremacist hate and extremism, had already been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole in a state criminal case.
The decision to seek the death penalty has been met with mixed reactions, with some family members of the victims expressing that they would prefer Gendron to suffer in prison rather than face the death penalty.
This is the first capital prosecution initiated by the Biden administration, which had previously imposed a moratorium on federal executions and had not moved forward with most of the capital prosecutions begun by the Trump Administration.