Federal Jury Selection Begins in Buffalo Supermarket Shooting

Nearly four years after a racist mass shooting killed 10 Black people at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, federal jury selection began Tuesday, October 13, 2026, in the case against Payton Gendron, who faces a possible death sentence for the May 14, 2022, attack. The trial will determine whether the convicted gunman receives capital punishment in addition to his existing life sentence.

According to 13WHAM, Gendron faces 27 federal charges, including hate crimes, along with firearms offenses. He is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty to state murder charges in 2023, when he admitted responsibility for the killings and renounced his earlier racist beliefs.

The jury selection process began with approximately 1,200 prospective jurors who completed questionnaires over the summer. That pool was narrowed to about 700 people, who will be questioned in groups of 70 by prosecutors and defense attorneys. A court clerk estimated that selecting 12 jurors and six alternates could take six to eight weeks.

According to WKBW, Gendron's attorneys filed a last-minute motion on Monday seeking dismissal of the indictment, arguing that the jury pool did not adequately represent the community because of the underrepresentation of African Americans on jury lists in the Western District of New York. The defense argued that historical segregation in East Buffalo, the victims' identities and the supermarket's importance as a community gathering place could affect the availability of Black jurors. The court denied the motion.

Investigators said Gendron, who was 18 at the time, traveled more than 200 miles from Conklin, New York, to Buffalo and fired approximately 60 rounds at shoppers and employees. Three people survived their injuries. Gendron surrendered as he left the supermarket, and the attack was livestreamed on social media.

Federal investigators also recovered writings and other evidence indicating that Gendron had planned the attack in advance. According to a federal complaint cited by WKBW, a search of his home on May 15, 2022, uncovered a handwritten note apologizing to his family and explaining his stated motivation. Investigators also found a receipt for a candy bar purchased at Tops on March 8, 2022, and handwritten sketches believed to depict the store's interior. Authorities said he had visited the supermarket several times before the shooting.

The victims, all Black, ranged in age from 32 to 86. They included Celestine Chaney, Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Pearl Young, Andre Mackneil, Heyward Patterson, Ruth Whitfield, Roberta Drury, Margus Morrison and Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who was working as a security guard.

Federal prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty, a decision the U.S. Department of Justice made in 2024 under President Joe Biden. The department rejected Gendron's proposal to plead guilty to the federal charges in exchange for a life sentence. His defense team does not intend to contest his guilt and instead plans to present mitigating evidence to persuade jurors against execution.

The federal public defender's office said the defense would focus on evidence relevant to the jury's sentencing decision while acknowledging the suffering of victims and survivors. Gendron's federal trial therefore centers on whether he should be executed rather than whether he carried out the attack.

Wayne Jones, whose mother, Celestine Chaney, was among those killed, plans to attend the proceedings. He said he no longer favors execution, believing that a life sentence would leave Gendron facing the consequences of his actions for decades.

Jones has spent years speaking about the shooting at media appearances and gun violence panels, while continuing to cope with his mother's absence. He also noted that a death sentence could lead to decades of appeals.

Zeneta Everhart, a Buffalo Common Council member whose son, Zaire Goodman, was shot in the neck and survived, expressed support for seeking the death penalty. Goodman and the two other survivors continue to live with the consequences of the attack, and Everhart has said her son still has shrapnel in his body.

Everhart described the attack as domestic terrorism rather than violence arising from a robbery or domestic dispute. She said that although she supports pursuing capital punishment in this case, she believes justice can still be served if Gendron is not executed.

Garnell Whitfield, whose 86-year-old mother, Ruth Whitfield, was killed, said his focus is on understanding the factors that contributed to the massacre. During the past four years, he has worked with church groups, victims' rights organizations, gun rights advocates and others to address white nationalism and racial violence.

Whitfield hopes testimony will shed light on Gendron's possible support networks, online radicalization and the broader social conditions that contributed to the attack. His concerns reflect a wider debate about how extremist ideologies spread and influence targeted violence.

Hate crime statistics provide further context for the case. According to FBI data released in August, law enforcement agencies reported more than 2,800 anti-Black hate crime incidents in 2025, nearly three times the number targeting Latinos. The FBI also reported that overall hate crime incidents declined 7% from 2024 to 2025.

Brian Levin, a hate crime analyst with the California Association of Human Relations Organizations, said Black people have been the largest numerical target in reported hate crime data every year since the FBI began collecting the statistics in 1991. The highest annual total cited was 3,670 anti-Black bias incidents in 1996.

Levin also connected the Buffalo attack to the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white gunman killed nine Black churchgoers. He described a recurring pattern in which young, predominantly white perpetrators use manifestos to justify targeted massacres, reference earlier attacks and potentially encourage future violence.

The federal proceedings will now move through individual questioning of prospective jurors before the final panel is seated. Gendron remains imprisoned under his state sentence while the federal case determines whether he will also receive the death penalty.