Prosecutors conclude arguments for death penalty in case of Manhattan bike path killer

Samantha Max

Published Mar 7, 2023

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Sayfullo Saipov was arrested on October 20, 2016 on a Failure to Appear charge for a Traffic Violation from Platte County court in Missouri.

Courtesy St. Charles County Department of Corrections

Samantha Max

Published Mar 7, 2023

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Federal prosecutors said the man who killed eight people when he plowed a truck down the West Side Highway bike path in 2017 has no remorse for his actions and should face the death penalty for his crimes.

“He is dangerous,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Leigh Houle said during closing arguments for the death penalty phase of the monthslong trial in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.

As Houle urged jurors to give Sayfullo Saipov the death sentence, she described the pain and destruction that he caused victims and their loved ones.

She showed photographs of bloodied and bruised bodies lying lifeless on the ground and shared the stories of parents, spouses and children who are still overcome with loss more than five years later.

“They weren’t OK. They aren’t OK,” Houle said as she detailed the grief of one victim’s family. “The defendant chose all this pain and anguish for this family.”

Saipov, 35, was convicted of more than a dozen charges last month, including murder and providing material support to Islamic State. That prompted a new phase of the trial in which the prosecution and the defense argued for and against the death penalty.

New York has not executed anyone since 1963, and the Court of Appeals struck down the state’s capital punishment law in 2004. But the death penalty is still legal in federal cases like Saipov’s. The Trump administration carried out a spree of executions following a nearly two-decade hiatus.

President Joe Biden pledged to eliminate the federal death penalty during his campaign, but a bill to abolish capital punishment, sponsored by New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, is stalled in Congress.

Jurors are expected to deliberate this week. To impose the death penalty, they would need to come to a unanimous decision. Otherwise, Saipov will be sentenced to life in prison.

Saipov’s defense attorneys asked jurors not to “meet death with more death” and implored them to spare Saipov from capital punishment.

“It is not necessary to kill Sayfullo Saipov,” said federal defender David Patton. “It is not necessary to make us safe. It is not necessary to get justice.”

Patton argued that Saipov won’t be able to harm anyone in a highly secure federal prison, where he’ll spend up to 23 hours a day by himself in a small cell.

“Mr. Saipov will die in prison, in obscurity, not as a martyr,” he said.

The arguments wrapped up the sentencing portion of the trial, which included emotional testimony from family members of the victims who expressed the pain Saipov caused them. Some said that their lives had been ruined, that they were unable to fill the void their loved ones had left behind, that there were no words in the English dictionary that could sufficiently describe their grief.

The defense team called a federal Bureau of Prisons official who described the conditions Saipov would face if he were to be sentenced to life imprisonment and the security measures that would prevent him from committing further crimes. A terrorism expert spoke about the influence of Islamic State propaganda, and how Islamic State members have targeted Uzbek migrants like Saipov with promises of paradise for them and their families in the afterlife. Several members of Saipov’s family also testified.

“The person who was raised by me, I can’t believe that person would do something like this,” Saipov’s grandfather, Sobit Saipov, testified, according to the New York Times.

Saipov wore bulky headphones over his ears during closing arguments to hear an interpreter translating the proceedings. He sat still with his head tilted down, only glancing up when the defense team showed photos of his family. The audience behind him was filled with victims, members of law enforcement, and reporters. At one point, a man in the pews fainted while prosecutors showed a graphic video of one of the victims.

Prosecutors argued in court records that on Oct. 31, 2017, Saipov drove a rented pickup truck down a path filled with pedestrians and cyclists with the intent to cause “maximum damage.” They said he was inspired by Islamic State videos that he watched on his cellphone and that he yelled “Allahu akbar” after exiting the vehicle.

U.S. attorneys also said in a criminal complaint that Saipov asked to display an Islamic State flag in his hospital room during an interview with law enforcement and said “he felt good about what he had done.” Authorities have called his actions the deadliest terror attack in New York since Sept. 11, 2001.

Defense attorneys said Saipov had been radicalized while watching videos online. They said he was isolated, spending hours by himself while working as a long-haul truck driver.

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Samantha Max

Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.

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