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Thread: Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov Sentenced to LWOP in 2017 NY Murders of Eight

  1. #41
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    U.S. says accused bike-path killer Saipov threatened to behead jail officer

    The Guardian

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - A man charged with killing eight people by driving a truck down a lower Manhattan bike path in October 2017 recently threatened to decapitate an officer at the jail that has housed him since his arrest, U.S. prosecutors said.

    In a Tuesday night court filing, the Department of Justice said Sayfullo Saipov made the threat on Dec. 18, after the officer's supervisor told Saipov to stop obstructing a security camera in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

    Prosecutors said they want to introduce the incident as "proof of future dangerousness" during the penalty phase of Saipov's case, if he is convicted at his April 20 trial.

    Saipov, a 32-year-old Uzbek national, has pleaded not guilty to charges including eight counts of murder, 18 counts of attempted murder and providing material support to Islamic State militants. He could get the death penalty if convicted.

    Federal public defenders representing Saipov did not respond to requests for comment.

    In a Wednesday court filing, the public defenders said they may try to exclude anything Saipov said while in custody at the jail that was involuntary or not responsive to questions, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

    According to prosecutors, Saipov first threatened to kill the officer on Dec. 17, confronting him over his alleged practice of frequently waking him at night by slamming a door.

    Still angry the next day, Saipov told the supervisor he would keep blocking the security camera until the officer's head was cut off, and called the officer an animal, prosecutors said.

    Saipov later told the jail's disciplinary committee he had told the officer that if he dared to open his cell, in two minutes "other guys will be picking up your dead body," and that he wanted to "cut this animal head off," prosecutors said.

    The government also wants permission to introduce other evidence during Saipov's trial and penalty phase. It said this included terrorist propaganda materials, photographs from the Oct. 31, 2017, attack, and statements Saipov made in court that showed his support for Islamic State and jihad and questioned the court's authority.

    The case is U.S. v. Saipov, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 17-cr-00722.

    (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Leslie Adler)

    https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/w...fficer-412912/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #42
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick has postponed the death penalty trial for Sayfullo Saipov until the fall of 2020 due to COVID19. Judge Broderick has also suggested a delay to forward an Uzbek interpreter on behalf of Saipov and 3,000 potential jury pool questionnaires.
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  3. #43
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    June 3, 2021

    Victims of Hudson River bike path terrorist Sayfullo Saipov agonizing over indefinite trial delay: prosecutor

    By Stephen Rex Brown
    New York Daily News

    The indefinite delay of a trial for the Uzbek man accused of a terrorist attack on the Hudson River bike path in 2017 is “aggravating the emotional pain” of his victims, a prosecutor said Thursday.

    Sayfullo Saipov still does not know when his death penalty trial will begin due to complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

    “What we’re hearing from victims and their families, with increasing frequency, is that this delay — the indefinite nature of the delay — has aggravated their emotional pain,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Richman said during a hearing in Manhattan Federal Court.

    The prosecutor read a letter from the family of a victim from abroad.

    “We understand that courtrooms are operating there, the wait is terrible ... It’s important to impart justice in this unfair and unexpected death in our family,” Richman said.

    Saipov is accused of running over his victims with a rental truck down the scenic bike path. Eight people died and 11 were injured.

    Saipov’s attorney, Federal Defender David Patton, countered that the government could simply resolve the delays by dropping the death penalty.

    “If the government wants to bring closure to this case, it can do so tomorrow and assure that Mr. Saipov never ever leaves a prison in his life. If they do not pursue the death penalty, that is what will happen,” Patton said.

    “The extraordinary efforts that are going into this case are entirely because the government is pursuing the death penalty.”

    Both the government and Saipov’s defense team plan to travel to Saipov’s native Uzbekistan to interview witnesses ahead of his trial. If Saipov is found guilty, a jury will hear “mitigating evidence” that he does not deserve the death penalty.

    The trip abroad to Uzbekistan, which is still in the throes of the pandemic, is one of the reasons for the delay.

    Selecting a jury is another problem. Judge Vernon Broderick said the trial would require summoning 800 potential jurors to fill out questionnaires in the courthouse. That process would take weeks due to social distancing and other measures imposed by court administrators.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...vqq-story.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #44
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Jury selection is scheduled to take place in August. The trial is expected to take until January.

    https://twitter.com/innercitypress/s...52073142747137
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Jury selection begins in death penalty trial for West Side bike path terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov

    By CBS News

    NEW YORK -- Preliminary jury selection is underway in the death penalty trial over the 2017 Halloween terror attackon the West Side of Manhattan.

    Lawyers for defendant Sayfullo Saipov claim evidence that others influenced his actions was not turned over in a timely fashion, CBS2's Tony Aiello reported Friday.

    Six foreign tourists and two New Yorkers were killed in the attack on Oct. 31, 2017.

    Saipov, radicalized to support ISIS, admits renting a truck and driving it down the West Side bike and pedestrian path.

    Almost five years later, and on the eve of the trial, the defense says vital information was not turned over quickly, as required.

    "The defense is alleging that it's been held onto for years, and that they're just dropping it on the defense weeks before trial," said Jason Goldman, a former prosecutor who reviewed the Saipov defense submission for CBS2.

    Saipov's team says it just received evidence "that has been in the FBI's possession for years," claiming "the significance [of this] is extraordinary" in that it bolsters their theory "that [Saipov] was influenced by others who share culpability, yet they are not being prosecuted."

    Evidence of influence by others could help the defense convince jurors to reject the death penalty.

    "Although these other actors may not have been criminally prosecuted, although there might not be evidence to hold them accountable for the actual crime, this is mitigation as it relates to the defendant on trial and how he was influenced, perhaps, to commit certain crimes. It builds context around why the crime may have been committed or what could have led to it. And the defense will always look for any and all information which might paint that picture more favorably for their client," said Goldman.

    The defense asked the judge to review how the FBI evidence was handled and why it was handed over so late. The U.S. Attorney's office said it will respond next week.

    Meanwhile, 800 New Yorkers are getting questionnaires as jury selection begins. Prospective jurors are being warned the trial and penalty phase could last from late October into late January.

    Saipov has indicated he's willing to plead guilty and accept life in prison if the U.S. drops its pursuit of the death penalty.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...ury-selection/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #46
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Guaranteed that Sayfullo Saipov gets a Life Sentence for eight New York murders
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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    U.S. to seek death penalty against accused New York bike path killer

    By Jonathan Stempel
    Reuters

    The U.S. government said it plans to seek the death penalty for the man charged with using a truck to kill eight people on a Manhattan bike path on Halloween in 2017.

    In a letter filed late Friday in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors said Attorney General Merrick Garland "decided to continue to seek the death penalty" against Sayfullo Saipov, and that they notified the defendant's lawyers and victims.

    David Patton, a federal public defender representing Saipov, declined to comment.

    The decision followed Garland's July 2021 moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice reviews its use of the death penalty. Executions had resumed in 2020 under Garland's predecessor William Barr, following a 17-year hiatus.

    Saipov, 34, an Uzbek national, has pleaded not guilty to a 28-count indictment, including for murder and for providing material support to Islamic State, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

    Prosecutors said Saipov intentionally used a Home Depot rental truck to mow down people along the West Side Highway on Oct. 31, 2017, hoping to gain membership in Islamic State.

    According to prosecutors, Saipov chose Halloween because he thought more people would be on the streets, and also planned to strike the Brooklyn Bridge.

    Those killed included five Argentinian tourists and one Belgian tourist. More than one dozen other people were severely injured.

    Saipov has been jailed since his arrest, and is now housed in Brooklyn. If found guilty, he could also be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

    Hundreds of prospective jurors received questionnaires last month to assess their knowledge of the case and potential bias.

    Formal jury selection could begin around Oct. 11 and last a few weeks, and a trial could stretch into January 2023.

    The Justice Department under Garland has defended the death penalty in some cases.

    They include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber, and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black people at a South Carolina church in 2015.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...er-2022-09-19/

  8. #48
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    Suspect in Bike Path Killing Faces First Death Penalty Trial Under Biden

    Though President Biden campaigned against capital punishment, Attorney General Merrick Garland is charting his own course in pursuing the death penalty in the trial of Sayfullo Saipov.

    By Benjamin Weiser

    On Halloween 2017, Sayfullo Saipov plowed a rented pickup truck down Manhattan’s crowded West Side bicycle path, smashing into pedestrians and cyclists, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen, the authorities said.

    Soon after Mr. Saipov was charged, President Donald J. Trump tweeted, “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!” And his attorney general later directed prosecutors to seek execution if Mr. Saipov was convicted.

    Last year, Mr. Saipov’s lawyers asked President Biden’s Justice Department to withdraw that order. Mr. Biden, after all, had campaigned against capital punishment. But his attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, denied the request, and on Monday, Mr. Saipov’s trial is scheduled to begin in Federal District Court in Manhattan — the first federal death penalty trial under the Biden administration.

    Mr. Garland’s decision to continue pursuing the death penalty for Mr. Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant, suggests a nuanced approach, one in which he has been reluctant to withdraw the threat of capital punishment in one type of case in particular: terrorism-related offenses.

    His decision has stirred debate among some legal scholars and death penalty activists. Some argue that he should adhere to the anti-death-penalty stance Mr. Biden took in his campaign, while others note that the president has never announced any formal policy position on capital punishment.

    Since taking office nearly two years ago, Mr. Garland has not sought capital punishment in any new case and indeed has declared a nationwide moratorium on federal executions. The Justice Department has also withdrawn directives issued by previous administrations seeking the death penalty against 25 federal defendants, according to court records and the department’s data.

    At the same time, the department has defended appeals of the death sentences imposed during President Barack Obama’s administration on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, and Dylann S. Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine members of a Black church in South Carolina.

    “It’s very hard to make sense of the way the Biden administration is thinking about and proceeding with the federal death penalty,” said Austin Sarat, a professor of law and political science at Amherst College, who has long written critically about capital punishment.

    “Biden’s stance against the death penalty on the campaign trail was, I think, an important signal to many about what this administration might do,” Mr. Sarat said. “The moratorium on federal executions? That’s welcome. But there’s no sign of anything beyond that.”
    Michael B. Mukasey, the attorney general under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, said he was uncertain what standard Mr. Garland was using in federal death penalty cases but he believed he had one.

    “Clearly, he is following laws Congress passed by recognizing at least that the death penalty should be sought in some cases, regardless of President Biden’s contrary views,” Mr. Mukasey said. “I think that is a principled decision, and very much the right thing to do.”

    Federal death penalty trials have been relatively rare, especially in Manhattan. The last executions in Manhattan federal death penalty cases occurred in the 1950s, most notably of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. More recently, federal executions were paused for nearly two decades, until the Trump administration put 13 people to death in the final six months of his tenure. There are currently 44 federal death row prisoners, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    A spokesman for the Justice Department said that as a matter of policy it does not offer public reasons for decisions to withdraw death penalty directives. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and David E. Patton, a lawyer for Mr. Saipov, declined to comment on the case.

    But some lawyers said a pattern had emerged: None of the 25 defendants for whom the Justice Department has withdrawn death penalty requests were charged in a terrorism-related offense.

    “Early on, it became clear that notwithstanding the statements made by both the president and the attorney general, that there was going to be this sort of carve-out around terrorism,” said Anthony L. Ricco, a veteran death penalty defense lawyer in New York.

    “The only question in our minds was whether or not that was going to include what some people call domestic terrorism,” Mr. Ricco added.

    Federal prosecutors, in seeking capital punishment for Mr. Saipov, described what they called his planning, premeditation and lack of remorse. They said that the attack was intended to “further the ideological goals” of the Islamic State, a terrorist organization, and that Mr. Saipov targeted the bike path on Halloween “to maximize the devastation to civilians.”

    The high number of murders charged against Mr. Saipov does not appear to have been pivotal to Mr. Garland’s decision to seek capital punishment. In November, the Justice Department withdrew a death penalty request made in St. Louis against Anthony Jordan, an alleged gang enforcer known as “Godfather,” who had been charged with involvement in 11 murders in a drug conspiracy case.

    inconsistent with Mr. Biden’s position, even if Mr. Saipov is charged with terrorism.

    “What the administration is doing is thinking, We can crack the door open for this one case,” said Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. “History tells us that a door that’s cracked open tends to be shoved open over time.”

    Mr. Saipov’s trial, in which jury selection lasted nearly three months, will focus first on the question of whether he is guilty; and if he is convicted, the same 12-member jury will decide whether he should be executed — typically in the federal system by lethal injection — or receive life imprisonment. A unanimous vote is required to impose the death penalty. The process could last until March, the lawyers have told Judge Vernon S. Broderick.

    The jurors are likely to be presented with graphic evidence and testimony about the attack, in which Mr. Saipov said he was inspired by ISIS videos he had watched on his phone. The assault ended after he drove the truck into a school bus, jumped out and waved pellet and paintball guns while shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” according to a federal complaint. Mr. Saipov was arrested after he was shot in the abdomen by a police officer.

    Of the eight fatalities, six were tourists, five from Argentina and one from Belgium. The other victims were a 24-year-old computer scientist from Manhattan and a 32-year-old financial worker from New Jersey.

    It was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001, the authorities have said.

    In January 2018, even before the decision to seek the death penalty in Mr. Saipov’s case was announced, his lawyer, Mr. Patton, the city’s federal public defender, said in a court filing that his client would plead guilty and accept a life sentence if prosecutors dropped the death penalty from consideration. The proposal was not accepted.

    After Mr. Biden took office, Mr. Patton made it clear in court that the offer still stood. But on Sept. 16, prosecutors wrote to Judge Broderick that “the attorney general has decided to continue to seek the death penalty.”

    Mr. Garland, asked at his February 2021 confirmation hearings about capital punishment, said that his views had evolved.

    As a Justice Department lawyer, he had led the investigation into the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. One of the convicted bombers, Timothy McVeigh, was executed in 2001 by lethal injection.

    “I supported the death penalty at that time for Mr. McVeigh in that individual case,” Mr. Garland testified. “I don’t have any regret.” But he added that he had “developed concerns about the death penalty in the 20-some years since then.”

    He said the sources of his concern were the “sort of arbitrariness and randomness of its application because of how seldom it’s applied and because of its disparate impact on Black Americans and members of other communities of color.” He also cited the large number of DNA exonerations in death penalty and other cases.

    He also acknowledged Mr. Biden’s opposition to the death penalty, as well as a president’s power to impose “an across-the-board moratorium.”

    “The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty is constitutional, but it is not required,” Mr. Garland said. “And that’s within the discretion of the president.”

    Mr. Garland testified that the president had the authority to make policy decisions that could affect the department broadly, and that he was not talking about the president deciding on how a particular case should go forward. Mr. Garland later instituted rules strictly limiting contacts between the White House and his department, although the guidelines allow communications related to policy issues.

    In July 2021, Mr. Garland ordered the nationwide halt to all federal executions, pending a review of the department’s policies and procedures.
    At the time, a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, said Mr. Biden approved of the decision.

    “As the president has made clear, he has significant concerns about the death penalty and how it is implemented, and he believes the Department of Justice should return to its prior practice of not carrying out executions,” Mr. Bates said.

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Saipov’s trial.

    Despite the president’s opposition to the death penalty and his support for Mr. Garland’s moratorium, Mr. Biden has not directed the attorney general to rule out capital punishment in all cases, said Rachel E. Barkow, a law professor at New York University, who specializes in sentencing.

    Of Mr. Biden, she said, “I’m not sure he feels comfortable unilaterally pulling it back in every single case.”

    She added that it did not seem fair to criticize Mr. Garland for leaving the death penalty “on the table,” as she put it, “because I don’t think that President Biden has made clear that it is off the table.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/n...h-penalty.html
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  9. #49
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    Jury hears opening arguments in NYC truck attacker’s death penalty trial

    A man inspired by the Islamic State group faces the first federal capital punishment trial of the Biden administration.

    BY JOSH RUSSELL
    Courthouse News

    MANHATTAN — The long-awaited death penalty trial of man charged with killing eight people with a truck on a New York City bike path in 2017 commenced Monday.

    Federal prosecutors described Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov’s terror attack on pedestrians along a West Side bike path in Lower Manhattan as “a scene of destruction and horror.”

    It was Halloween day as Saipov sped a Home Depot pickup truck at up to 66 miles per hour along the bicycle path, mowing down pedestrians and cycling tourists from Belgium and Argentina before crashing into the side of school bus, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Nuo Li told jurors Monday morning.

    The attack “crushed their bodies, sent them flying, left them bleeding to die,” Li said during the prosecution’s 20-minute opening argument. “He did it for ISIS, the brutal terrorist organization that fells its followers to kill innocent civilians around the world and in the United States.”

    Saipov was charged in a 28-count indictment with, among other offenses, eight counts of murder in aid of racketeering and 18 counts of attempted murder.

    A guilty verdict on the eight counts of murder in aid of racketeering activity for Saipov, who is now 34, would trigger an additional penalty phase of the trial in which the jury will decide whether to impose the death penalty or a life sentence without any possibility of parole.

    Prosecutors told jurors that Saipov specifically chose Oct. 31 as the date of the attack and Lower Manhattan as the location “to maximize the number of people he kill and maim for ISIS.”

    Had Saipov not been subdued — an NYPD officer shot him after the truck crashed into the school bus — the Department of Justice says he intended to continue the vehicular murder spree across to the east side of Lower Manhattan by the Brooklyn Bridge, just a few blocks away from the Manhattan federal courthouse where the trial is being held.

    Just before he was taken down by responding officers, Saipov waved realistic-looking fake guns while shouting the Muslim prayer phrase “Allahu akbar," meaning “God is most great.”

    Li told jurors that the prosecution will show them encrypted messages with violent images and instructions from the Islamic State terrorist network.

    Highlighting a piece of digital propaganda that included one bloody car tire paired with the caption, “Run over them without mercy,” Li noted: “Just as the defendant would eventually do when he used a truck to run over innocent civilians."

    Investigators recovered on two phones from the truck containing other instructions from the Islamic State group, including the jihadist mandate: “Find an American and crush him with your car.”

    Born in Uzbekistan, Saipov moved to the Unites States in 2010 and was living in Paterson, New Jersey, at the time of attack.

    He was denied bail ahead of trial and has spent the last five years in federal custody. Facing a trial that is expected to last through March 2023, Saipov declined to attend the voir dire portion of jury selection.

    During a hearing in June 2018, Saipov disregarded U.S. District Judge Vernon’s warnings about his right against self-incrimination and launched into a 10-minute diatribe extolling the Islamic State.

    The process to narrow the pool of over 800 New Yorkers down to 12 jurors and six alternates in the Southern District of New York began in August 2022 with written questionnaires.

    The protracted in-person jury selection in the death penalty case began in October and lasted nearly three months, finally concluding in early January 2023.

    Saipov’s defense lawyers had asked the government to take capital punishment off the table, but prosecutors confirmed in a September letter that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland "decided to continue to seek the death penalty."

    The decision is at odds with Garland’s reinstatement one year earlier of a moratorium on federal executions — a policy nearly identical to one put in place by former President Barack Obama but lifted by former President Donald Trump, who carried out 13 federal executions in six months, the most that the country has seen in 120 years.

    Trump had been vocal about his desire to execute Saipov immediately following the defendant's Oct. 31, 2017, arrest.

    “NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room," the then-president had tweeted about the first Jihadist attack on American soil during his presidency. "He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!”

    Presiding U.S District Judge Vernon Broderick ruled back in 2019 that Trump’s remarks were "perhaps ill-advised" but not necessarily an undue pressure tactic on Justice Department to seek the death penalty.

    Judge Broderick, an Obama appointee, is requiring the entire courtroom to wear face masks for the duration of the trial due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

    https://www.courthousenews.com/jury-...penalty-trial/
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  10. #50
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    New York truck attack trial opens with depiction of ‘destruction and horror’

    By Shayna Jacobs and Mark Berman
    The Washington Post

    NEW YORK — The man charged with driving a truck onto a Manhattan bike path in 2017 and killing eight people acted with cruel purpose, unleashing a “scene of destruction and horror” in an effort to prove his worth to the Islamic State, a federal prosecutor said Monday.

    More than five years after the attack, opening statements in the federal trial of the man accused of carrying it out began Monday in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Li painted an agonizing dual portrait of what happened on Oct. 31, 2017.

    Li said on one side was Sayfullo Saipov, a 34-year-old Uzbekistan native who has been charged with terrorism and murder in the case. On the other side, he said, were the victims left behind.

    “The riders, human beings, lay unconscious or dead,” Li said. “Survivors staggered, wounded and dazed, searching for their family and friends. Screams filled the air.”

    Victims were crushed and sent flying in the air, Li said, while others were left “bleeding to die.” Directing the blame squarely at Saipov, the prosecutor said, “He ended eight lives in his vicious attack, and he forever devastated the lives of so many others.”

    Saipov’s attorneys have not contested that he was the attacker. David Patton, an attorney for Saipov, told jurors that although his client undeniably carried out the attack, he did not do so with the expectation of becoming a full-fledged member of the Islamic State. Instead, Patton said, Saipov, who has pleaded not guilty, expected to die a martyr.

    The trial, expected to last about three months, centers on what was the deadliest act of terrorism in New York City since the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, with the trial unfolding in a courtroom just blocks from that site.

    Prosecutors are seeking a relatively rare federal death sentence for Saipov. If he is sentenced to death, Saipov would become the first person given such a sentence in the time that President Biden, who opposes capital punishment, has been in office, according to the Justice Department.

    The death penalty has loomed over the case since the immediate aftermath of the bloodshed. Only days after the attack, President Donald Trump tweeted a call for Saipov to be sentenced to death. Saipov’s attorneys had sought to have the government blocked from seeking the death penalty, citing Trump’s public commentary and saying it put undue pressure on the attorney general to seek such a sentence. A judge denied that request.

    Nearly a year after the attack, federal officials said they intended to seek a death sentence for Saipov, citing what they called the intentionality of the killings, the substantial planning involved and the suspected killer’s “lack of remorse.”

    During the Trump administration, the Justice Department put a renewed focus on the federal death penalty, carrying out 13 executions over the final months of Trump’s term. But Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, in 2021 declared a moratorium on federal executions.

    This moratorium prevents new executions from being scheduled, but it does not stop the Justice Department from pursuing new federal death sentences or defending previous ones. In September, the department said in a court filing in the truck attack case that Garland had decided to keep pursuing a death sentence for Saipov.

    Garland has not authorized prosecutors to seek new death sentences in any cases since becoming attorney general, said Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Justice Department. The department has also withdrawn its previous authorization to seek the death penalty in 25 cases, Stueve said.

    The death penalty remains an unresolved issue in another mass killing in New York state. The gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store last year pleaded guilty in state court but still faces a pending federal hate-crimes case.

    Federal officials can seek a death sentence in that case but have not said whether they will do so. Stueve declined to comment Monday about whether Garland had made a decision about the death penalty in that case.

    In Manhattan, the truck attack trial centers on Saipov, who authorities have accused of providing support to a terrorist organization. He has also been charged with murder in aid of racketeering activity, assault with a dangerous weapon and attempted murder. In court filings, authorities say Saipov told them he was inspired by Islamic State videos and chose to attack on Halloween because he believed more people would be out on the holiday.

    The carnage erupted on a sunny fall day as pedestrians and bicyclists were traveling along a bike path that traces the Hudson River along Manhattan’s western edge. Officials say that five Argentines — friends celebrating the anniversary of their high school graduation — two Americans and a Belgian were killed.

    The attack was not spontaneous, law enforcement officials said. An FBI special agent wrote in a complaint that Saipov began planning to attack a year earlier, decided to use a truck as his weapon about two months beforehand and then, just days before the violence, rented a truck to practice making turns.

    His goal, the agent wrote, was “to kill as many people as he could.”

    After the attack, Saipov was taken into custody and hospitalized. The FBI agent wrote that when speaking to law enforcement officials, Saipov expressed pride in the attack and asked whether he could display an Islamic State flag in his hospital room.

    Federal death penalty cases involve two phases. First, jurors must determine whether to find defendants guilty. Then, if they do, the trial shifts to the penalty phase, in which they weigh a potential punishment.

    During his opening statement, Patton described Saipov's life and upbringing, saying that his family in Uzbekistan was not particularly religious.

    When Saipov came to the United States at age 22, Patton said, he did not know anyone and began working as a long-haul truck driver while living in Ohio. Patton described him as growing increasingly isolated on long road trips, at which point he began to be drawn to the Islamic State’s propaganda.

    Saipov came to believe that the Islamic State’s view of Islam “was the only true view,” Patton said, “the only true Islamic view.” The attack in New York came as the Islamic State had called on its followers to carry out violence around the world, and Patton said that in Saipov’s mind, carrying out such an assault would help his family “avoid the torments of hell and ascend to the highest reaches of heaven.”

    While the opening remarks were made, Saipov sat at a defense table, wearing glasses, a white mask and headphones playing a live translation of the trial. U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick has made masks mandatory at the trial, though lawyers and witnesses can have their masks off when they are speaking.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...path-killings/
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