Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shooter who opened fire and killed ten people in the 2022 mass shooting.

Justice Department prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday that they will seek capital punishment for Payton Gendron, 20, who is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance for parole after pleading guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism. New York does not invoke the death penalty.

Gendron had promised to plead guilty to federal hate crime charges if prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, but the Justice Department had the option to do so. It is unclear now how Gendron will plead.

United States Attorney of Western New York Trini Ross said in a notice announcing the prosecutorial decision on Friday that Gendron had selected the supermarket in order to “maximize the number of black victims,” according to the Associated Press.

Gendron entered the Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022, and opened fire using a semi-automatic rifle, which was marked with racial slurs and phrases. He drove over 200 miles from his home in Conklin, New York, to intentionally carry out the mass shooting. 

The victims ranged from ages 32 to 86 years old. Ross detailed several factors for prosecutors deciding to seek the death penalty, including the extensive planning that Gendron did prior to the shooting and the decision to target at least one victim who was “particularly vulnerable due to old age and infirmity.” 

Eight of the people fatally shot were customers, and the other two were the store security guard and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries. Some of the family members had mixed feelings about prosecutors seeking the death penalty, including Mark Talley, the son of 63-year-old Geraldine Talley, whom Gendron fatally shot.

“I’m not necessarily disappointed in the decision. … It would have satisfied me more knowing he would have spent the rest of his life in prison being surrounded by the population of people he tried to kill,” Mark Talley said.

“I would prefer he spend the rest of his life in prison suffering every day,” he added.

The Justice Department seeking the death penalty is a rarity, particularly since the election of President Joe Biden, who, like many Democrats, opposes capital punishment. This is the first time since Biden’s election that Attorney General Merrick Garland has approved a pursuit of the death penalty. Under Garland, the Justice Department has permitted the continuation of two death penalty prosecutions and withdrawn from pursuing capital punishment in over two dozen cases, the outlet reported.

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One of the cases where the Justice Department allowed the seeking of the death penalty to continue was for the Tree of Life antisemitic gunman who killed 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue, which was sought in 2019 before Garland took over as head of the agency. A federal jury ruled in August 2023 that Robert Bowers deserved the death penalty. 

The other case where the death penalty was allowed to be sought involved an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a bike path in New York City. However, the jury could not decide unanimously on whether Sayfullo Saipov deserved capital punishment, so he received life in prison with no chance for parole instead.