BUFFALO, N.Y. — The jury selection process is underway in the federal death penalty trial of Payton Gendron, the man who killed 10 Black people and injured three others in a racially-motivated shooting in May 2022.
About 1,200 people are expected to fill out an approximately two-hour questionnaire, the first part of weeding out who if fit to serve.
It’s the beginning of a long process which will decide if Gendron’s life should be taken.
It’s a big decision, and it comes with a lot of care. The upcoming trial has two phases: guilt and penalty. While jurors are expected to be fair and impartial during both phases, considering he’s already pleaded guilty to similar state charges, the big questions both sides will likely try to get to the bottom of is: what are people’s thoughts on the death penalty?
Two groups here would be automatically disqualified: those who don’t believe in the death penalty at all and those who think this crime should always end with a death sentence.
But even still, experts say it’s going to be very hard to find a jury in this case, even with 1,200 candidates. Not only will their own life/obligations for something that will take months be taken into account, but also their beliefs on this case.
That being said, jurors were pulled from a pool comprising eight counties of the Buffalo division of Western New York.
“There has to be some sort of appearance of neutrality, an appearance that they haven’t made their minds made up, that their brains are cluttered with racial bias, they haven’t been flooded with so much media that they’ve had their minds make up about the appropriate sentence,” explained attorney John Elmore. “[But] I think that the the goal of the defense has always been to save the life of Payton Gendron.”
A Gallup poll recently found the percentage of Americans who think the death penalty is morally acceptable is at 52%, a record low. Back in 2005, that was at 71%.
Considering New York doesn’t have the death penalty, finding a jury that doesn’t have their mind made on the death penalty could be difficult.
You have to consider that there have been few federal death penalty cases in New York in recent history.
The last federal execution in New York was in the 1950s for alleged Soviet spies, almost half the country doesn’t have the death penalty and only 23 death sentences were handed down nationwide last year.
“New York was without a death penalty from the mid 1970s to 1995, when a death penalty statute was enacted. It remained in place until 2004, when the High Court in New York, the New York Court of Appeals, found constitutional problems with it, so it invalidated the state’s death penalty law,” said James Acker, a professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany.
Looking at the federal level, President Joe Biden during his administration had all but three federal death row sentences commuted to life in prison. That includes the Boston Marathon bomber and two hate-motivated cases similar to this one: the Charleston Mother Emanuel AME church shooting, which targeted Black people, and the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting, which targeted Jews.
If a single juror votes against death in this case, leading to a life sentence, it could signal that shifting bar.
“My guess is that if the jury comes back and does not impose a death sentence, that could send a message that capital punishment’s time has basically come and gone because, again, this is, on its face, a very highly aggravated case that seems to call out for the death penalty,” said Acker.
Both sides in the Gendron trial will have 20 peremptory challenges, basically meaning that they can dismiss a juror for any reason.
It is possible that people might try to misrepresent their beliefs – whether to sway for or against death or just to be part of a highly-publicized case.
At the end of the day, it’s all about finding the right people and avoiding a mistrial.
“The most important thing, I would say, to the families of the victims is that this case only be tried once,” said Elmore. “That’s why it’s very important that 12 very impartial jurors serve on this jury.”
There will also be alternates chosen in case any of the main jurors need to be removed for any reason.