Penalty Phase Scheduled to Begin in Federal Capital Trial of Sayfullo Saipov

Sayfullo Saipov (pic­tured) was found guilty in fed­er­al court on January 26, 2023 of killing eight peo­ple on a New York City bike path in 2017 by dri­ving a truck into a crowd of peo­ple. He will now like­ly be the first per­son to face a fed­er­al cap­i­tal penal­ty hear­ing dur­ing President Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion. On February 6, 2023, a jury in Manhattan will begin hear­ing evi­dence to deter­mine whether Saipov will be sen­tenced to death or life with­out parole. The jury must vote unan­i­mous­ly for a death sen­tence to result.

The deci­sion by the Department of Justice to pur­sue a death sen­tence against Saipov has raised ques­tions about the Biden administration’s stat­ed oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. ​“President Biden ran on a plat­form of abol­ish­ing the fed­er­al death penal­ty,” said Brian Stull, deputy direc­tor of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, in a state­ment to Newsweek. ​“Saipov’s tri­al and the DOJ’s deci­sion to seek death rep­re­sents a bro­ken promise by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.” Miriam Krinsky, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Fair and Just Prosecution, said, ​“It is my hope that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion will have the resolve not just to main­tain a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty, but also to put a full halt to its use and dis­man­tle the machin­ery of death our nation has embraced for far too long.”

On June 30, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced an offi­cial mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions, say­ing, “[S]erious con­cerns have been raised about the con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty across the coun­try, includ­ing arbi­trari­ness in its appli­ca­tion, dis­parate impact on peo­ple of col­or, and the trou­bling num­ber of exon­er­a­tions in cap­i­tal and oth­er seri­ous cas­es.” While oth­ers address those issues, Garland said, the Department of Justice must ​“take care to scrupu­lous­ly main­tain our com­mit­ment to fair­ness and humane treat­ment in the admin­is­tra­tion of exist­ing fed­er­al laws gov­ern­ing capital sentences.”

Only one per­son, Ronell Wilson, has been sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing a fed­er­al jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion in New York since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988. Wilson was sub­se­quent­ly found to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for the death penalty.