U.S. Seeks Death Penalty in Terror Attack on Manhattan Bike Path

NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan told a judge Friday that they intend to seek the death penalty if they convict Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek man charged in the 2017 truck attack that killed eight people on a crowded Manhattan bike path.

The Halloween Day attack was the deadliest in New York City since Sept. 11, 2011.

The decision to seek capital punishment ultimately rested with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Saipov’s lawyers had asked the judge to block the government from seeking the death penalty, citing tweets by President Donald Trump after the attack which called for Saipov’s execution.

Shortly after the attack, Trump posted messages on Twitter declaring, “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY” and “Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY.”

The government’s decision was announced in a submission to the judge, Vernon S. Broderick of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, by the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Prosecutors say Saipov plowed a pickup truck down a bike path along the Hudson River, killing eight and injuring 11. The rampage ended when he smashed into a school bus, jumped out of his truck and ran down the highway waving a pellet gun and paintball guns shouting “God is great” in Arabic. A police officer shot him in the abdomen, bringing him down.

Saipov, who faces eight capital counts of murder and other charges, is scheduled for trial on Oct. 7, 2019.

He told authorities after his arrest that he was inspired by Islamic State videos and that he had used a truck as a weapon to inflict maximum damage against civilians, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.

Although Saipov has pleaded not guilty, his lawyers told Broderick in January that he would change his plea to guilty and accept a sentence of life imprisonment if the government agreed not to seek his execution.

Saipov’s lawyer, David E. Patton, who heads the federal public defender’s office in Manhattan, said he was disappointed by the attorney general’s decision.

“We think the decision to seek the death penalty rather than accepting a guilty plea to life in prison with no possibility of release will only prolong the trauma of these events for everyone involved,” he said.

When they sought to bar Sessions from seeking the death penalty, Saipov’s lawyers had argued that Trump’s tweets and other statements had politicized the decision.

In addition to the president’s tweets about Saipov, the lawyers cited a more recent tweet by Trump suggesting that Justice Department charging decisions should be informed by political considerations, as well as reports that Trump had considered firing Sessions for not following his wishes.

“Mr. Sessions works for President Trump and obviously wants to keep his job,” Saipov’s lawyers wrote. “It defies reality, not to mention all appearances, to believe that he could make a truly independent decision” on the death penalty in Saipov’s case.

But Berman’s office, in a court filing Friday, called the defense’s arguments “speculative and unsupported.” The government said Sessions and his staff had reviewed Saipov’s case in accordance with the law and Justice Department policy.

“The attorney general appropriately exercised his discretion in determining that the circumstances of this case — which involve a terrorist attack that caused extensive death and human suffering — justify the ultimate sanction available,” Berman’s office wrote.

The government said it was “unremarkable that the president possesses strong views concerning the attack at issue in this case, which constituted one of the most horrific acts of terrorism in this country since September 11, 2001.”

Berman’s office also said it disagreed with the defense’s characterization of Trump’s tweets “as reflecting a direction to act based on ‘raw political considerations.'”

But even if they did, Berman’s office argued, Sessions had made it clear in a statement released on Twitter in August that Justice Department actions “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”