Skip to content Skip to footer

Durbin & Pressley Urge DOJ Not to Pursue Death Penalty for Buffalo Mass Shooter

In a joint statement, the lawmakers invoked President Biden’s 2020 pledge to abolish use of the federal death penalty.

Sen. Dick Durbin listens during a press conference following a Senate Democratic luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on September 28, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Two Democratic congressional lawmakers have issued a joint statement demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) reverse its decision to seek a death penalty judgment for the mass shooter who killed 10 Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo in 2022, noting that such a punishment wouldn’t produce any real justice for the families of victims.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), who co-authored a bill to abolish the federal death penalty last summer, made the statement on Wednesday, in response to the DOJ’s announcement last week that it would seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the white supremacist who killed the shoppers nearly two years ago. Gendron was indicted with 27 federal counts relating to the shooting, including murder and hate crime charges.

In a manifesto he wrote before the shooting, Gendron espoused many alt-right conspiracy theories, including the “great replacement theory.” He also professed beliefs in false racist tropes regarding Black people’s intelligence, sexuality and propensity for violence.

Despite Gendron’s horrific actions, the Biden administration should “reverse its position seeking the death penalty in this case,” Durbin and Pressley said in their joint statement, noting that the action was incongruent with President Joe Biden’s pledge during the 2020 election to abolish the use of the death penalty at the federal level.

The lawmakers recognized that the mass shooting was a “morally reprehensible” action, but added that “state-sanctioned killing is not justice.”

Durbin reiterated the points he and Pressley made by posting to social media additional comments regarding their request to the DOJ to change its course.

“The Justice Department should follow the President’s lead and reverse its position seeking the death penalty in this case,” Durbin wrote on X. “And Congress must pass my bill with @RepPressleyto end this deeply flawed and inhumane form of punishment once and for all.”

The decision by the DOJ to pursue the death penalty in this case has been condemned by other pro-justice organizations, including Equal Justice USA, a group “that works to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma.”

“The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder,” Equal Justice USA CEO Jamila Hodge said in a statement. “Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.”

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy