Conviction in 2017 Manhattan terror attack that killed 8

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Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek native who drove a rented truck down a Manhattan bike path adjacent to the Hudson River in an ISIS-inspired terror attack that killed eight people, was convicted Thursday by a federal court jury of murder and attempted murder in order to gain entry to ISIS, making him eligible for the death penalty.

He was also convicted of providing material support to ISIS.

Saipov, in a dark jacket and white shirt, wore a mask over his face in court. He bowed his head as the guilty verdicts were read.

The trial, which began in Manhattan federal court earlier this month, marked the first federal death penalty trial of the Biden administration. Jurors will decide next month whether Saipov should face the death penalty.

The jury reached its verdict after about six hours of deliberations over two days. Jurors sent several notes that indicated some confusion about the charges but came to an unanimous verdict on the 11th day of the trial.

The truck attack, which was on Halloween, was the deadliest terror attack in New York since Sept. 11, 2001

Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan who lived in Florida, Ohio and New Jersey following his arrival in the United States, was allegedly inspired to commit the killings by ISIS videos he viewed, prosecutors said. The rental truck used in the Oct. 31, 2017, attack was decorated with an ISIS flag.

Prosecutors alleged that the suspect drove the truck on a bike lane and pedestrian walkway in lower Manhattan, and when the truck collided with a school bus he exited the vehicle holding a paintball gun and pellet gun.

"Moments after Saipov got out of the truck, he yelled, in substance and in part, 'Allah Akbar,'" according to charging documents filed in the case.

He chose Halloween to commit the attack, which required "substantial planning and premeditation," anticipating there would be more civilians on the streets that day, prosecutors alleged, calling it "heinous, cruel and depraved."

The defense, which did not call any witnesses during the trial, conceded during opening statements that Saipov carried out the attack but challenged the government's allegation he did it to become a full-fledged member of ISIS. The defense said Saipov did not want to join the terror group -- he wanted to die a martyr.

The last time the death penalty was carried out in a New York federal case was in 1953 when husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A split among jurors means there will be no death penalty for an Islamic extremist who maniacally raced a truck along a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people and maiming others.

The decision means Sayfullo Saipov, 35, an Uzbekistan citizen who lived in New Jersey, gets an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in the October 2017 attack. Jurors told the judge Monday that they were unable to reach the unanimous verdict required for a death sentence.

The sentencing was the culmination of a trial that featured emotional testimony from survivors of the attack and relatives of the five tourists from Argentina, two Americans and a Belgian woman who were killed.

Over several days, prosecutors argued for the harshest punishment. Some of Saipov’s relatives testified that they still loved him and hoped he would eventually realize the evil of his act.

Saipov’s responsibility for the killings was never in doubt.

While some U.S. states send prisoners to death row with regularity, that kind of outcome is extremely rare in New York, which no longer has capital punishment and last executed a prisoner in 1963.

During his trial, Saipov seemed moved by testimony from his father and sisters. Otherwise he sat quietly, his shoulders slumped, as he listened through headphones to the testimony of victims, including a woman from Belgium who lost her legs, and her husband, who needed brain surgery because of the attack.

Saipov turned down the chance to testify at trial. But during his 2019 pretrial hearing, he lectured Judge Vernon S. Broderick about the American legal system, insisting that he could not be judged for eight deaths when “ thousands and thousands of Muslims are dying all over the world.”

During closing arguments in the penalty phase on Tuesday, lawyers made a final appeal to jurors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Houle called for the death penalty for Saipov’s “unremorseful slaughter of innocent civilians.”

Defense attorney David Patton urged a life sentence, saying his client then will “die in prison in obscurity, not as a martyr, not as a hero to anyone.”

Saipov came to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010 and lived in Ohio and Florida before moving to Paterson, New Jersey.

His death penalty trial was the first of its kind in New York in a decade.

In 2007 and again in 2013, federal juries in Brooklyn sentenced to death a man who killed two New York police detectives, but both sentences were reversed on appeal before a judge ruled the killer was intellectually disabled.

In 2001, a Manhattan federal jury rejected the death penalty for two men convicted in the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa after their lawyers argued against making the defendants into martyrs.

The last time a person was executed for a federal crime in New York was in 1954.