Payton Gendron Case: Sentencing, Federal Trial, and Settlements

The Payton Gendron case refers to the state and federal prosecutions of the white supremacist who killed ten Black people and wounded three others at a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022. Gendron, 18 at the time, pleaded guilty in state court in November 2022 and is serving life in prison without parole. He now faces a separate federal death penalty trial, with jury selection underway and opening arguments expected no earlier than October 13, 2026.¹

What Happened at the Tops Store

At about 2:30 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, Gendron drove roughly 200 miles from his hometown of Conklin, New York, to a Tops store at 1275 Jefferson Avenue in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Buffalo’s East Side. He arrived in body armor and a tactical helmet, carrying a modified AR-15-style rifle and wearing a GoPro camera that livestreamed the attack on Twitch.²

He began firing in the parking lot before entering the store. Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police lieutenant working as the store’s armed security guard, shot Gendron, but the bullet was stopped by the body armor. Gendron returned fire and killed Salter.³ Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia later said Salter’s actions allowed others to identify the threat and flee toward the back of the store.⁴

Thirteen people were shot in total. All ten of the dead were Black: Roberta A. Drury, 32; Margus D. Morrison, 52; Andre Mackniel, 53; Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Geraldine Talley, 62; Celestine Chaney, 65; Heyward Patterson, 67; Katherine Massey, 72; Pearl Young, 77; and Ruth Whitfield, 86. Three survivors — Zaire Goodman, 20; Jennifer Warrington, 50; and Christopher Braden, 55 — had non-life-threatening injuries.⁵

Twitch cut the livestream about two minutes after the first shot. Between 20 and 28 people saw some portion of it before it was disabled, but at least one viewer downloaded the video and reposted it elsewhere, where it was reportedly viewed more than three million times before being taken down.⁶² Two days before the shooting, Gendron had posted a 180-page manifesto online steeped in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and containing tactical instructions intended to inspire future attackers.⁷

The State Case: Guilty Plea and Life Without Parole

On November 28, 2022, Gendron pleaded guilty in Erie County Court to 15 state charges: one count of domestic act of terrorism motivated by hate, ten counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder as a hate crime, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon. He was the first person in New York charged and convicted under the state’s 2020 domestic terrorism statute, and he waived his right to appeal as part of the plea.⁸⁹ Erie County District Attorney John Flynn called the attack a “racist hate crime” in which the defendant targeted victims because they were Black.

On February 15, 2023, Judge Susan Eagan sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole for each of the ten murders, plus 25 years for each of the three attempted murders. “There can be no mercy for you, no understanding, no second chances,” Eagan told him.¹⁰

The hearing stretched over hours of statements from families and survivors. Simone Crawley, the granddaughter of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, told Gendron he “clearly did not value your own life, which allowed you to devalue the lives of others.” Christopher Braden described ongoing PTSD and night terrors. While Barbara Massey spoke about her sister Katherine, an unidentified man in the audience lunged toward Gendron at the defense table; court officers restrained him and briefly removed Gendron from the courtroom.¹¹¹⁰

Gendron spoke briefly, saying he was “very sorry for all the pain” he had caused. “I shot and killed people because they were Black. I believed what I read online and acted out of hate,” he said, adding that he did not want anyone to be inspired by him. At least one family member shouted that they did not need his apology and left the courtroom.¹⁰

The Federal Death Penalty Trial

On July 14, 2022, a federal grand jury in the Western District of New York returned a 27-count indictment against Gendron under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The charges include ten counts of hate crimes resulting in death, three counts of hate crimes involving bodily injury and an attempt to kill, one count of attempting to kill additional Black people, and 13 firearms offenses. The indictment alleged Gendron targeted Black people with the intent to “prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race.”¹²¹³

Why the Case Is Still Going

Even though Gendron is already serving life without parole, the federal case continued because prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. On January 12, 2024, the Department of Justice announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland had authorized the capital prosecution. It was the first new capital case authorized under the Biden administration, which had previously deauthorized 26 federal death penalty cases and imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.¹⁴ Gendron’s defense had signaled it would plead guilty to the federal charges if the government dropped the death penalty and accepted a life sentence to run consecutively with the state sentence.¹⁵

Key Pretrial Rulings

The case is before U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo. In April 2025, Vilardo denied a defense motion to dismiss the death penalty on constitutional grounds, including the argument that executing someone for a crime committed at 18 violates the Eighth Amendment.¹⁶

In September 2025, Vilardo struck four of the government’s proposed aggravating factors for the penalty phase. He ruled the jury could not consider Gendron’s racial motivation as a standalone aggravating factor, finding that it conflicted with a provision of the Federal Death Penalty Act barring jurors from weighing a victim’s race in sentencing. He also excluded evidence of injury to surviving victims as irrelevant to capital sentencing, struck an “attempt to incite violence” factor on First Amendment grounds, and folded the “selection of site” factor into a broader planning and premeditation factor. Other aggravating factors were allowed to proceed, including grave risk of death to additional persons, multiple killings, substantial planning, and vulnerable victim.¹⁷

DOJ filed an interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit in January 2026 seeking to reinstate the racial animus, injury to survivors, and incitement factors. A three-judge panel heard oral arguments on May 20, 2026, but had not issued a ruling as of that date.¹⁸

The defense has also sought to suppress digital evidence from Gendron’s Discord server and 48 devices seized from his family home, arguing the search warrants were overly broad. Vilardo reserved decision but indicated he was “likely to allow” statements Gendron made to police after his arrest.¹⁹

Jury Selection and Trial Schedule

Jury selection officially began June 15, 2026, with roughly 1,200 potential jurors receiving questionnaires. The questionnaire phase was expected to run about two weeks, followed by individual in-person selection to seat 12 jurors and alternates. Trial itself is scheduled no earlier than October 13, 2026, with a guilt phase and penalty phase projected to extend into January 2027.¹ Gendron appeared in court in person on June 15 for the first time in several months. An advocate with the Western New York Coalition Against the Death Penalty said he has been held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.²⁰

Civil Lawsuits and Settlements

Survivors and victims’ families, represented by Everytown Law, filed civil lawsuits in New York state court against gun accessory manufacturer Mean Arms, gun store Vintage Firearms, body armor maker RMA Armament, social media companies YouTube and Reddit, and Gendron’s parents, Paul and Pamela Gendron.²¹

The lawsuit against Mean Arms alleged the company sold the “MA Lock,” a device that allowed Gendron to bypass New York’s ban on high-capacity magazines by attaching a 30-round magazine to his rifle after removing the lock, and that the company provided online instructions for removing it. In February 2026, Mean Arms settled for $1.75 million without admitting wrongdoing and agreed to permanently stop selling the MA Lock in New York.²² Vintage Firearms, the gun store that sold Gendron the AR-15-style rifle, permanently closed as part of a separate resolution, with the owner agreeing never to obtain a federal firearms license again. A confidential settlement was also reached with the Gendron family.²³

The claims against YouTube and Reddit initially survived motions to dismiss in March 2024, when an Erie County Supreme Court judge ruled that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged the platforms’ algorithms helped radicalize the shooter.²⁴ On July 25, 2025, a New York appellate court reversed that ruling and dismissed the claims against the social media companies, finding that the lawsuits ultimately sought to hold the platforms liable as publishers of third-party content, protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.²⁵

The Warning Signs Before the Attack

In June 2021, while a 17-year-old high school student at Susquehanna Valley High School in Conklin, Gendron made statements to a teacher about wanting to commit murder and suicide. New York State Police were called, and he was hospitalized for about a day and a half for a psychiatric evaluation. He was released, and officials determined at the time there was no specific or actionable threat.²⁶

New York’s red flag law, enacted in 2019, allows school administrators, law enforcement, and others to petition a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order to prevent someone from purchasing or possessing firearms. No one filed such a petition after the June 2021 incident. Governor Kathy Hochul later requested an investigation into why the law was not invoked. State Senator Brian Kavanagh, the law’s sponsor, said that if there was evidence Gendron was dangerous, “somebody should have sought an extreme-risk order.”²⁷

Gendron’s radicalization had begun during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when he started spending time on 4chan’s weapons forums and first encountered the Great Replacement theory. He later described the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant as his primary inspiration, calling Tarrant’s livestreamed massacre a “major turning point” that shifted him from suicidal thoughts to planning violence of his own.²

New York’s Legislative Response

The shooting drove a wave of policy changes in New York. Governor Hochul signed executive orders establishing a Domestic Terrorism Unit within the state’s Division of Homeland Security, directing the State Police to create a social media monitoring unit focused on domestic violent extremism, and requiring State Police to file for Extreme Risk Protection Orders whenever they have probable cause to believe someone poses a threat.²⁸

The state legislature passed a gun package that included a license requirement for buyers of semiautomatic rifles, an expansion of the red flag law to allow health care professionals to file petitions, a ban on the sale of body armor to civilians, and the elimination of grandfathering for large-capacity ammunition feeding devices. Lawmakers also raised the minimum age to purchase military-style weapons from 18 to 21.²⁹³⁰ Additional laws required social media companies to publish policies on hateful conduct and established a Task Force on Social Media and Violent Extremism within the Attorney General’s office.²⁸

1
Spectrum News. Gendron in Court as Jury Questionnaires in Federal Death Penalty Trial Begin
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West Point Combating Terrorism Center. The Buffalo Attack: The Cumulative Momentum of Far-Right Terror
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ABC30. Buffalo Mass Shooting: Aaron Salter, Retired Cop Hailed as Hero
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WKBW. Security Guard Who Tried to Stop Mass Shooter at Buffalo Tops Identified as Aaron Salter
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CNN. What We Know About the Victims of the Buffalo Supermarket Shooting
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New York Attorney General. Online Platforms Report on the Buffalo Shooting
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Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The Buffalo Terrorist Attack
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CNN. Buffalo Tops Grocery Shooting: Payton Gendron Pleads Guilty
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Axios. Buffalo Shooting Guilty Plea
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VOA News. White Supremacist Gets Life in Prison for Buffalo Massacre
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Good Morning America. Buffalo Mass Shooter Payton Gendron Sentenced to Life
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ATF. Federal Grand Jury Indicts Accused Tops Shooter
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U.S. Department of Justice. Victim Notification: United States v. Payton Gendron
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CNN. Buffalo Mass Shooter Death Penalty Authorized
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Democrat and Chronicle. Lawyers for Buffalo Killer Payton Gendron Seek to Help Families
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WKBW. Federal Judge Rejects Payton Gendron’s Motion to Dismiss Death Penalty
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FindLaw. United States v. Gendron, 22-CR-109-LJV
18
Courthouse News Service. Feds Ask Second Circuit to Reinstate Racial Hatred Factor in Buffalo Mass Shooter’s Trial
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WGRZ. Defense Seeks to Suppress Evidence in Payton Gendron Trial
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WKBW. Jury Selection Begins in Federal Death Penalty Trial of Payton Gendron
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Everytown Law. Buffalo Tops Friendly Market Shooting Lawsuits
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ABC News. Gun Parts Maker to Pay $1.75 Million in Settlement
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NBC News. Gun Accessory Company to Pay $1.75 Million to Buffalo Supermarket Shooting Victims
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Everytown. Everytown Law Announces Victory in Buffalo Mass Shooting Civil Lawsuits
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Courthouse News Service. Social Media Not Liable for Buffalo Shooting
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PBS NewsHour. Authorities Investigating Buffalo Shooter’s Prior Threats, Mental Health
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NBC News. New York’s Red Flag Law and the Buffalo Mass Shooting
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Governor of New York. Governor Hochul Announces Comprehensive Package to Combat Domestic Terrorism
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New York State Assembly. Assembly Announces Gun Law and Domestic Extremism Package
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Spectrum News. Tops Shooter First Guilty Under NYS Domestic Terrorism Law