(ABC) Four days before the penalty phase is scheduled to begin, attorneys for Sayfullo Saipov sought on Thursday to strike the government’s decision to seek the death penalty, in part because of what the defense said was possible ethnic or religious discrimination.
Saipov was convicted of carrying out the deadliest terror attack in New York City since Sept. 11 when he drove a truck down a bicycle and pedestrian path along the Hudson River in October 2017, killing eight people.
The defense motion questioned why the government was pursuing the death penalty when the Biden administration has imposed a moratorium on federal executions and declined to authorize the death penalty in deadlier attacks, notably the hate crime at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that killed 23 people in 2019.
