What to Know
- A New York federal jury charged with determining whether Sayfullo Saipov, the convicted murderer of a Manhattan bike lane massacre, is executed or spends the rest of his life in prison told a judge Monday they have already made a decision. regarding his sentencing, authorities said.
- It was not clear when the verdict would be read.
- A vote in favor of death would have to be unanimous. The jury will begin deliberations on the death penalty on Thursday, less than a day after the discussions, due to the absence of a juror, whose absence ended up excused because his brother suffered a heart attack.
NEW YORK — The New York federal jury charged with determining whether Sayfullo Saipov, the convicted murderer of a Manhattan bike lane massacre, is executed or spends the rest of his life in prison told a judge Monday that They have already made a decision regarding his sentence, according to a spokesman for the prosecution.
It was not clear when the verdict would be read.
A vote in favor of death would have to be unanimous. The jury will begin deliberations on the death penalty on Thursday, less than a day after the discussions, due to the absence of a juror, whose absence ended up excused because his brother suffered a heart attack.
The 34-year-old was found guilty in January in a federal case for killing eight people in a Manhattan bike lane five years ago in an attempt to impress a terrorist group.
Saipov, an Uzbek national living in New Jersey at the time of the 2017 Halloween attack, drove a Home Depot rental van at least 10 blocks along the popular Hudson River Greenway bike path from West Houston Street to the streets. Chambers, striking nearly a dozen pedestrians and bicyclists before crashing into a school bus.
The vehicle attack killed a woman visiting Belgium with her family, five friends from Argentina and two Americans. She left others with permanent injuries, including a woman who lost her legs.
The dozen jurors deliberated about seven hours over two days before convicting Saipov of 28 counts of crimes that included murder in aid of organized crime and support of a foreign terrorist organization. Later, days later, the jurors returned to court to hear more evidence to help them decide whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.
A death sentence for Saipov would be an extreme rarity in New York. The state no longer applies capital punishment, and the last state execution was in 1963. A federal jury in New York has not handed down a death sentence that has withstood legal appeals in decades, with the last execution in 1954.
Witnesses at the time of the terror attack, the deadliest of its kind in New York City since 9/11, said the school bus crash also appeared deliberate. About a dozen were injured, some of them seriously, in addition to the eight deaths in what the authorities described as a “cowardly act of terrorism.”
Saipov reportedly showed no remorse. Prosecutors told jurors in closing arguments that later, the day after the attack, he said he was proud of what he did and smiled when he spoke to an FBI agent.
He got out of his truck yelling “God is great” in Arabic, with pellet guns and paintballs in his hands before a police officer shot him because he thought they were real firearms.
He also asked to hang the flag of the Islamic State group in his Manhattan hospital room, prosecutors previously said.
During the sentencing phase of the Saipov trial, emotions ran high. Saipov’s father professed shame and love for his son and the defendant’s uncle yelled “dirty ISIS bastards!” and he banged on a door as he left the room.
Habibulloh Saipov’s testimony in Manhattan federal court and the subsequent outburst occurred in front of a jury that had to decide whether Sayfullo Saipov should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
“I’m sorry this happened,” Judge Vernon S. Broderick said after the jury left the room. He expressed concern about the effect the dramatic turn could have on jurors and warned defense attorneys to ensure such behavior is not repeated.
“That we are disappointed by that is an understatement,” attorney David Patton told the judge. Broderick then expelled the uncle from court.
The death penalty phase began after the same jury last month convicted Sayfullo Saipov, who slumped in his chair throughout the trial and appeared unapologetic or emotional.
Cristina Navarrete informs us from Manhattan.
But she was heartened when her father, whom she recently saw for the first time in 13 years, took the stand to denounce the terror attack, saying it had shamed the family.
Asked by defense attorney David Stern how he reacted to his son’s attack, Habibulloh Saipov said: “My soul was destroyed.”
“He committed a terrible tragedy. He killed eight people and injured many more and ruined their lives,” Saipov said.
“How do you feel about what he did?” Stern asked.
“I feel really bad about this. And I would like to apologize to everyone, all the victims,” he continued.
Habibulloh Saipov testified that he once told his son after working in the United States for five years that “the people there are sincere and always smile at each other.”
When the son arrived in the country in 2010 and began working as a truck driver, the father said they often had hours-long conversations to keep him awake on long trips.
Habibulloh Saipov cried as he said he found out his son had carried out the attack and saw his wife collapse and faint after seeing the footage of the aftermath on her phone. He said that he was then subjected to 15 days of interrogation by law enforcement.
At one point, Sayfullo Saipov removed the protective mask from his face to wipe his eyes as his father cried. The father also spoke of phone calls in which Sayfullo Saipov bragged that he should feel lucky to have a son who had done something heroic.
“Do you feel lucky to have a son who did what he did?” Stern asked.
“Absolutely not,” replied the father.
Habibulloh Saipov acknowledged that he will probably never see his son again after he returns to his home country of Uzbekistan.
Carolina Ardila reports to us from Lower Manhattan.
Asked if she still loves him, she said: “With all my heart.”
He added that he hopes his son is not sentenced to death so that he realizes the truth about his crimes.
The uncle’s outburst and another scream from an unidentified woman left a relative of one of the victims sobbing as the judge called a nurse. He also ordered Sayfullo Saipov to be searched.
The words “dirty ISIS bastards” were broadcast by an interpreter at the judge’s request. The interpreter said that anything else anyone said was unintelligible.
Sayfullo Saipov told investigators after his arrest that he carried out the killings after the Islamic State group called for terror attacks.
Testimony resumed after a long recess, and the judge instructed the jury that the uncle’s outburst was not directed at the court, the jury, the prosecutors, the defense, or the trial process.
Hamidulloh Saipov, another uncle, testified that he, too, still loves his nephew, even though he believes he did “something wrong, something unbelievable.”
“He broke everyone’s hearts. He broke our hearts,” the uncle said. “Everybody was shocked. Everybody was sick.”
He said Sayfullo Saipov had changed because he was “influenced by bad people” and added that he hoped his nephew would “be himself again”.
Sayfullo Saipov’s sister, a year his junior, also tearfully described the damage her brother’s actions have caused to their parents’ health.
Until Saipov’s trial, Biden’s Justice Department, under the direction of Attorney General Merrick Garland, had not launched any new attempts to obtain the death penalty in a federal case. But Garland has allowed US prosecutors to continue advocating capital punishment in cases handed down from previous administrations.
It’s been a decade since a jury in New York last considered the death penalty.
Federal juries in Brooklyn twice sentenced a man who murdered two NYPD detectives to death, once in 2007 and again in 2013, but both sentences were overturned on appeal. A judge eventually ruled that the killer had an intellectual disability.
In 2001, just weeks before the 9/11 attacks, federal juries in Manhattan refused to impose the death penalty on two men convicted of the deadly bombings of two US embassies in Africa. Lawyers for the men had urged jurors not to make martyrs of the defendants.
