BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Attorneys for the white supremacist gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket told a judge Thursday that the federal charges against him should be dropped because there weren't enough Black people and other minority groups on the grand jury that indicted him.
Payton Gendron did not attend the hearing, during which his lawyers argued that his constitutional rights to a grand jury drawn from a cross section of the community were violated.
At the hearing's start, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo noted Gendron's objection to the prevalence of white people on the panel seemed “a little incongruous” in the hate crimes case. He did not immediately rule on the motion.
Gendron could face the death penalty if convicted in the 2022 mass shooting at a Tops supermarket, which he targeted because of its location in a primarily Black neighborhood. Those killed ranged in age from 32 to 86. Three others were wounded.
Gendron already 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.
A trial on the pending federal hate crime and weapons counts is expected to begin next year. The Justice Department said it would seek the death penalty if Gendron is found guilty.
Attorney John Elmore, who represents some of the victims’ relatives in lawsuits, said Gendron's lawyers are doing what they can to keep him alive. He said challenges to the makeup of juries rarely succeed, even though he regularly sees juries lacking minorities.
“It is very ironic that attention to this problem is being brought out in this case, where Payton Gendron committed a racially motivated homicide,” he said by phone after the hearing. “But this has been a persistent problem in our courts that needs to be addressed.”
Gendron's lawyers argued in a court filing that Black and Hispanic people and men are “systemically and significantly underrepresented” in the lists from which jurors are selected in the Buffalo area.
“To illustrate this point, the grand jury that indicted Payton Gendron was drawn from a pool from which approximately one third of the Black persons expected and one third of the Hispanic/Latino persons expected,” Gendron's lawyers wrote. Exacerbating the problem, they said, was that the data sources used by a vendor to pull the lists together weren't preserved.
“We don’t know what the vendor did,” Assistant Public Defender Sonya Zoghlin said. "More importantly, the vendor doesn’t know what he did.”
Statistically, the addition of two more Black people on the 60-person grand jury panel would have balanced the panel, Vilardo said.
“Can't that be the result of an accident," the judge asked, rather than systemic exclusion?
In opposing the motion, Assistant U.S. Attorney Caitlin Higgins said that at worst, the issue constitutes a “technical violation,” not grounds to dismiss the indictment.
The federal law governing jury selection “doesn’t entitle the defendant to a perfect representation,” she said.
Zoghlin said the issue was larger than the panel that ultimately heard Gendron's case and included the exclusion of certain groups from the selection process, including inactive voters.
In a written filing, the U.S. Attorney's office said Gendron didn't prove a systematic underrepresentation that was caused by the district’s jury plan. Any disparities in the racial makeup were within accepted guidance, they wrote, and not caused by the selection process, which draws from voter, driver, tax, disability and unemployment rolls.
Higgins said courts have routinely rejected similar challenges: Vilardo said he was unaware that any such motions had been granted in cases with similar disparities in New York state's federal courts.
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.
FILE - Payton Gendron, center, listens as he is sentenced, Feb 15, 2023, in Buffalo, N.Y. (Derek Gee/The Buffalo News via AP, Pool, File)
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Trump administration's push to expand oil and gas development in Alaska faces a new test Friday, with the latest lease sale set for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Opponents of drilling in the refuge's coastal plain have pointed to a lack of industry interest in the prior two sales held there and ongoing changes in Alaska’s arctic region due to climate change as proof the region should be off-limits to drilling. But supporters of drilling see the coastal plain, which is roughly the size of Delaware, as a potential untapped resource that could boost U.S. oil production and generate new revenue and jobs.
A coalition of conservation groups this spring sent a letter to leaders of 11 petroleum companies including major ConocoPhillips and Hilcorp, both major players in Alaska, urging them to not participate in the sale. The letter cited ongoing litigation over the leasing program, dating to President Donald Trump's first term, and warned of “financial, operational and reputational risks.”
The letters, signed by groups including The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Earthjustice, called the refuge a crown jewel in the country's public lands system and said there is strong support for protecting it, “making any action there especially visible and consequential.”
A spokesperson for ConocoPhillips Alaska, Megan Olson, said the company doesn't discuss its lease sale plans. A Hilcorp spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has taken a keen interest in Alaska, and his tax and spending bill passed by Congress last year included provisions mandating lease sales in three regions of the state. In addition to the refuge's coastal plain, leases have also been offered in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in Cook Inlet, an aging basin that's provided natural gas for Alaska's most populous region for decades.
There were no takers in the Cook Inlet auction in March. But there were hundreds of bids, including from major oil companies, for what was the first sale since 2019 in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska — despite pending litigation challenging the leasing program. The Trump administration has moved to open more lands to drilling in the reserve and roll back protections there. The petroleum reserve is where ConocoPhillips Alaska is developing the large Willow oil project.
On Alaska's vast, petroleum-rich North Slope, the major oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk lie between the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
A state corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, currently holds leases in the refuge but there is no active drilling. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the coastal plain could contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, but there is limited information about the amount and quality of oil.
The coastal plain, bordering the Beaufort Sea in northeast Alaska, features rolling hills and tundra and provides habitat for wildlife including musk oxen and migratory birds. It is considered sacred by the Gwich'in, because the caribou herd they rely upon calve there. Leaders from Gwich’in villages near the refuge have vowed to continue fighting to prevent drilling there.
But some Alaska Native communities have embraced development and see it as essential to the regional economy.
Nagruk Harcharek, president and CEO of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an advocacy group whose members include leaders from Alaska Native communities on the North Slope, said there’s a long history of balancing development with culturally important practices, such as subsistence hunting. Responsible development is a key part of self-determination, particularly for residents in Kaktovik, the only community within the refuge, who support drilling, he said.
Kaktovik residents hunt and fish on the coastal plain and “will be a big part of whatever project moves forward in making sure that all of those resources are protected and that their people are taken care of," he said.
FILE - Snow covers the mountains of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Oct. 14, 2024, near Kaktovik, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
FILE - The Kaktovik Lagoon and the Brooks Range mountains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are seen in Kaktovik, Alaska, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
