As racist killer apologizes, judge, attorneys say racism still must be confronted after Buffalo massacre
Justice singled out Payton Gendron in the courtroom Wednesday.
But as the judge sentenced him to a lifetime in prison, the hearing was also about the systemic racism and social media influences that created a monster who targeted Black shoppers and livestreamed his shooting spree that killed 10 and wounded three others at the Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue on May 14.
“I would characterize what happened today as the end of the beginning,” Erie County District attorney John Flynn said after the sentencing. “… It certainly does not put any closure on what we need to do as a society and as a community going forward.”
Most of the hearing was devoted to families of the victims, who called out Gendron for his hatred of Black people and described in painful detail their loss of a father, a daughter, a brother, a grandparent or a stepsister. When the time for the judge and lawyers talk came, they, too, focused on the evils of society they said fueled the Binghamton-area man to travel to Buffalo to kill.
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Before the mass shooting, Gendron detailed his plans and his hate toward Black people in hundreds of pages of messages he posted online. In them, he described why he picked the location for the mass shooting: It was a crowded supermarket in a neighborhood with one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in upstate New York.
“He drove over 200 miles out of his way with one mission, with one goal: to kill as many Black people as possible,” said Assistant District attorney Justin Caldwell.
Families of victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Tops on Jefferson Avenue tell the court about their loved ones, and how the hate crime May 14 affected their lives.
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“He was steadfast to accomplish his goal of killing as many Black people as possible and starting a race war,” Caldwell said. “He fed into propaganda and lies. They convinced him that somehow these innocent people who you’d never heard of, who’d never heard of him, who never had a conversation with him, who had never even met him were a threat to his very existence and identity as a white man.”
Beyond the horror of that day, the case highlights a much deeper problem, said Brian Parker, one of his three defense lawyers.
“This young man’s violent, hate-fueled assault was in part the product of centuries of pervasive racism and discrimination in this country,” Parker said during the sentencing. “These problems need to be addressed just as many others have publicly demanded since this terrible event took place. Unfortunately, neither this proceeding nor any criminal trial can expose or address the historical racism that set the stage for our client’s horrible acts.
“We as a community need to have those conversations in our legislative bodies and in our living rooms to achieve meaningful change,” he added. “The racist hate that motivated this crime was spread through online platforms. And the violence that was made possible was in part due to the easy access of assault weapons. Still our client is responsible for this crime. He will spend the rest of his life locked away and eventually he will die in state prison. We hope that knowing he will never be free again will offer some small bit of comfort to those that he hurt so much.”
Tops gunman Payton Gendron reads an apology to the court at sentencing for his guilty plea to 15 counts, including domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder, before Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023.
Gendron’s comments accounted for 47 seconds of the two-hour hearing.
“I cannot express how much I regret all the decisions I made leading up to my actions on May 14th,” Gendron said. “I did a terrible thing that day.
“I shot and killed people because they were Black,” he said. “Looking back now, I can’t believe I actually did it. I believed what I read online and acted out of hate. And now I can’t take it back. But I wish I could. I don’t want anyone to be inspired by me do what I did.”
His words of regret rang hollow among many in the courtroom, including Mayor Byron Brown.
“The time to be remorseful was when the thought first came into his mind to kill innocent people,” Brown said. “The time to be remorseful was when he was driving hundreds of miles and over three hours to get to this community. That’s when he should have felt remorse, stopped himself and turned around and not done it. So what the defendant had to say today to me is much too little, much too late.”
Brown said the case has raised issues that need to be addressed: gun reform, more mental health resources and reining in hate-filled social media that are radicalizing people.
“And finally, white supremacy,” he said. “It is a cancer. It is a horror. And it is capable of motivating people to commit these kinds of crimes in our community. More has to be done to stamp out white supremacy and its proliferation.”
Drawing on historical references to racism in America, Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan reproached Gendron for the crimes driven by his white supremacist motives.
“There is no place for your hateful and evil ideology in a civilized society,” Eagan told Gendron.
“There can be no mercy, no understanding, no second chances,” Eagan continued. “The damage caused is too great. You will never see the light of day as a free man again.”
“There is no place for your hateful and evil ideology in a civilized society,” Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan said before sentencing Payton Gendron to life in prison.
Gendron previously pleaded guilty to 15 charges, including domestic terrorism motivated by hate. In addition to the domestic terrorism charge, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole, Gendron pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder, three counts of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime and one count of second-degree weapons possession. Gendron has told his lawyers not to appeal the sentence, Parker said.
As Eagan sentenced him on each count, she named each of the victims along with a trait or description that helped define their contributions to the community or their families.
“This indictment speaks to the 13 victims and their families that lost the most, but they are not the only victims,” Eagan said. “There are thousands that have been traumatized directly and vicariously by this defendant’s actions.
“We have seen the community turn out in support and are seeing signs of much needed change in East Buffalo,” the judge added. “It is a testament to the power of love and compassion to overcome evil and hate by turning pain into purpose. But it is just the beginning. We have a long way to go.”
She said Gendron’s “hateful act and other similar hateful acts across the country” are motivated by white supremacy.
“The ugly truth is that our nation was founded and built in part on white supremacy,” Eagan said.
She cited historical acts of injustice and oppression, from the treatment of Native Americans by the first European settlers to slavery, Jim Crow laws and government policies that created segregated public housing with communities of color often placed in environmentally hazardous locations or split apart to make room for expressways.
Payton Gendron was sentenced on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, after pleading guilty in Erie C…
She cited government subsidized developments in the suburbs with restrictive covenants prohibiting the sale of suburban homes to African Americans along with redlining practices in communities of color. She also mentioned the war on drugs and mass incarceration that disproportionately affects of men of color. And she cited more: inequities in education, employment opportunities, the existence of food deserts and inadequacies in health care.
“Our history is replete with both individual and systemic discriminatory practices, many of them still firmly in place today,” she said. “In fact, it is these very policies and practices that contributed to and made this atrocity possible. The effects of these policies, some current and others decades and centuries old, created the segregation in our city and enabled this defendant to research and identify his target to maximize the impact of his evil intent.”
“The harsh reality is that white supremacy has been an insidious cancer on our society and nation since its inception,” she said. “However, white supremacy is not inevitable, or unstoppable. It has been carefully cultivated and nurtured by individuals and the government for centuries. This is the history that we have all inherited. It has been passed down from generation to generation. We must acknowledge that history, see that history for what it is, recognize it and learn from it. Or we are doomed to repeat it.
“Let ours be the generation to put a stop to it. We can do better. We must do better. Our own humanity requires it,” she said. “We must make the outpouring of support, love and compassion that followed this heinous act an everyday practice.”
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