Jury Selection Begins in Federal Hate Crimes Trial Over Buffalo Supermarket Shooting

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the federal trial of Payton Gendron, who faces a potential death penalty for the 2022 white supremacist attack at a Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 Black people. The assault at the Tops Friendly Market is considered the deadliest hate-motivated shooting targeting Black people by a lone gunman in recent history.

Gendron is charged with over two dozen federal hate crime charges and more than a dozen firearms charges. He is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to state murder charges in 2023, during which he admitted to the crimes and renounced his past views.

His defense team has stated they will not dispute his guilt but will focus on presenting mitigating evidence to persuade the jury to spare Gendron from execution. "Nothing will change the fact that Payton Gendron will die in prison," the federal public defender office said in a statement. "At trial, we will offer mitigating evidence about Payton that the jury needs to consider in making its decision. Nothing we say or do is intended to be disrespectful or insensitive to the victims, the survivors, or their loved ones."

Some victims' family members have mixed feelings about the death penalty. Wayne Jones, whose mother Celestine Chaney was killed in the shooting, said he believes the shooter should live with his actions. "I really think that he should just sit and have to think about it year after year after year and just be miserable," Jones said. Zeneta Everhart, whose son was among the survivors, believes the death penalty is warranted given the nature of the crime. "This isn't a shooting over a robbery or a domestic violence situation. This is domestic terrorism," Everhart stated.

On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old Gendron drove from his home in Conklin to Buffalo and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, killing 10 people and injuring three others. Investigators found that Gendron had planned the attack, motivated by a desire to frighten non-white and non-Christian people and influenced by a baseless "great replacement theory."

The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86. Among those killed were Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young, Andre Mackneil, Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison, Celestine Chaney, and Aaron Salter, a retired police officer working as a security guard.

The Justice Department, under the Biden administration, decided to pursue a death sentence in 2024. This marks the first capital case overseen by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had previously placed a moratorium on the death penalty. Gendron's defense team had proposed a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence, which the Justice Department rejected.

The Buffalo shooting is recognized as one of the deadliest acts of anti-Black violence in modern U.S. history. Hate crime statistics show that Black people have been the primary numerical target annually since the FBI began collecting data in 1991. According to the FBI's most recent data, law enforcement agencies reported over 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025.

Experts note that Gendron fits a pattern of young, often white males who commit targeted massacres, justifying their actions with manifestos that often reference prior attacks and encourage future ones. This pattern suggests that such events are also a form of domestic terrorism, exacerbated by online radicalization.

Garnell Whitfield, who lost his mother Ruth, expressed hope that the trial testimony would shed light on Gendron's radicalization process, the social media influences, and the societal factors that contribute to hate and violence.