The lack of unanimity among the jurors has saved Sayfullo Saipov’s life. He automatically received a life sentence.
This 35-year-old man, born in Uzbekistan, was residing in New Jersey when he became radicalized under the influence of Islamic State (IS) propaganda, which led him to commit the terrorist attack recorded in October 2017 in New York.
At the wheel of a rental van, it took several people ahead in the west area of ??Manhattan, along the Hudson River, causing eight deaths.
The jury found him guilty on all counts on January 26. And the same members of the jury, after another month of hearings, had to decide on the sentence, the death penalty as requested by the prosecution or the confinement forever requested by the defense, which at no time disputed the authorship of the attack and maintained that Saipov “will pass away in the darkness of jail, not as a hero.”
This Monday, the jurors informed Judge Vernon S. Broderick, president of the court, that they were divided and, therefore, unable to reach a unanimous decision, a mandatory requirement to impose the death penalty. The decision came after two days of deliberation. At no time did they specify who was for or against. Just one was enough to avoid irreparable punishment.
This trial marked the first in the Biden administration with a request for the death penalty. The Democrat, with strong religious convictions, campaigned against this punitive measure and even advocated its abolition. Since he took office there have been no federal executions. The secretary of Justice, Merrick Garland, imposed a moratorium that put an end to the fever that his predecessor Bill Barr had in the Republican government to execute prisoners.
On this occasion, however, Biden upheld the order he received from the other administration and did not stop the prosecution from seeking the maximum sentence. The then President Donald Trump, the same day of the terrorist action, already tweeted that the detainee “should be sentenced to death.”
It is also a rare case in New York, where executions are even more extraordinary. The last application of the maximum penalty in the Big Apple occurred in 1963, while by federal request this circumstance dates back to 1954.
In 2007 and 2013, federal juries in Brooklyn sentenced a defendant to death for killing two police officers in New York. But both sentences were overturned on appeal before the judge determined that the defendant was a person with intellectual disabilities.
A federal jury in Manhattan has rejected the death penalty for two men found guilty of planting deadly bombs at a pair of US embassies in Africa. They were convinced by the defense lawyer when he told them that applying the death penalty would only make them martyrs.
