A federal judge denied a motion to dismiss one of the hate crime charges filed against the man who gunned down 10 Black people in a racially motivated mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Payton Gendron is currently serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty in New York state court to 10 counts of first-degree murder and a single count of domestic terrorism motivated by hate. He was the first person ever to be convicted of domestic terrorism in the state of New York.
Gendron was arrested after storming into a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, which boasted a large Black clientele, and opening fire on numerous shoppers on May 14, 2022.
The then-18-year-old donned body armor and camouflage and used an assault rifle he had illegally purchased and illegally modified during his shooting spree that he live-streamed.
Now, federal prosecutors and Gendron’s defense team are gearing up for a federal trial in which Gendron could face the death penalty. The federal 27-count indictment Gendron faces includes more than a dozen hate crime charges.
Gendron’s legal team previously filed a motion to dismiss the 27th count of the indictment, which alleges that Gendron attempted to kill or maim other Black people who were in and around the supermarket but they weren’t harmed in the shooting.
Court documents reveal that defense attorneys contested that the argument spelled out in the count was too vague. They argued that individuals to whom the count applies should be clearly named and identified instead of being unnamed and only grouped by the term “Black people.”
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo rejected the motion, ruling that the count does refer to a specific group of people.
“The government responds that count 27 ‘clearly delineate[s] a discrete class of victims: the Black people who were present in and around Tops during [Gendron]’s mass shooting,’ so there is no ambiguity about the intended victims’ identities,” the court filings read, according to WIVB.
Authorities found several racist writings and journals Gendron kept that revealed he planned the massacre for months and was motivated by a racist, far-right conspiracy known as replacement theory, which proposes the idea that minorities are gradually replacing white Americans.
Gendron’s attorneys have been swinging for small wins ahead of their client’s federal trial.
They filed a separate motion requesting the judge to dismiss the use of the Hate Crime Act, claiming it was unconstitutional because Gendron had already been prosecuted under New York’s hate crime statute. They also submitted other motions requesting the judge to delay the trial a full year and to dismiss the death penalty as a potential sentence in the federal case.
The judge rejected all of those motions.
Jury questionnaires for Gendron’s federal trial are set to begin in October. Jury selection is slated for January 2026.
