Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Legal teams in the Tops shooting case are meeting in federal court on Thursday to address issues surrounding the case.
Attorney John Elmore says the first item on the agenda is whether or not the case will be adjourned for a year.
"As any death penalty lawyer would have, their goal would be to keep their client alive. If they can keep their client alive, another day, another month, another year, they've done what they're required to do," stated Elmore in an interview with WBEN. "There's 4,000 terabytes of information that was given to the defense, and they need time to decipher it and analyze it. So they've asked for more time for that. And so because this is a critical stage of the proceedings, I know in the past, Gendron has waived his right to appear in court, but I think some of the topics here that are would be considered to be critical. It's very likely to be in court."
Elmore says there's issues with a hearing concerning the constitution of the death penalty for 18-year-olds.
"There was a case several years ago by the Supreme Court, it's called the Roper decision, that said a 17 year old doesn't have the mental capacity to be sentenced to death because at the time of a commission of a crime, the brain is not fully developed yet. The brain doesn't fully develop until person is 25 and since the Roper decision, there's been a lot of scientific evidence about the development of the adolescent brain. There's going to be a hearing determining what science the court should apply in determining the constitution of the death penalty as it applies to Gendron who was 18 at the time of the commission of this terrible, awful crime," explained Elmore.
There will also be discussions about jury selection and how to proceed with finding suitable candidates for a death penalty case.
"When there's a death penalty trial, there are two phases of the trial, the first trial involves innocence or guilt, and then the second involves the guilt phase. In order for jurors to be qualified in a death penalty case, they have to be questioned about their views of the death penalty. If a juror would not consider death under any circumstances they can't serve. Or if a juror automatically believes that death would be a sentence if somebody takes a life of another human being, or in this case, 10 human beings, they should automatically be sentenced to death, they can't be served," stated Elmore.