New York state does not have the death penalty, and the state already separately sentenced Gendron to life in prison last February. Gendron’s public defense lawyers have said that he would plead guilty to all 27 federal charges, resulting in multiple federal life sentences, provided prosecutors did not seek capital punishment, the Buffalo News reported.
Bishop Michael W. Fisher of the Diocese of Buffalo at the time of the shooting condemned the “utterly senseless act” and urged Catholics to “pray for the victims and all those impacted by this act of cowardice.”
Gendron is not the first person to be condemned to death under the Biden administration, but the DOJ’s push for the death penalty in this case appears to be the first time that the DOJ has done so in a federal case initiated under the Biden administration.
In contrast to numerous states that use the death penalty, the federal death penalty has been applied relatively sparingly since being reintstated in 1988. After a period of nearly two decades without a single federal execution, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, a Catholic, in July 2019 resumed the practice of federal executions, carrying out more than a dozen by the administration’s end. There are currently 40 prisoners on the federal death row, most of whom are imprisoned in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
As a candidate for president, Joe Biden, a Catholic, called for the elimination of the death penalty. And in July 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice conducts a review of its policies and procedures.
Although the department said no executions will take place while the reviews are conducted, the moratorium does not formally end federal executions and they could be legally resumed by this or a future administration. A White House spokesperson told Reuters this week that while the Justice Department makes sentencing decisions, Biden’s stance had not changed.
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