An Islamic extremist who purposefully raced a truck along a busy New York City bike route in 2017, killing eight people and injuring others, will not be put to execution due to a jury split. According to the ruling, Sayfullo Saipov, a 35-year-old Uzbek national who resided in New Jersey, will receive an automatic sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole for the attack in October 2017.

On Monday, the jury informed the judge that they were unable to come to the unanimous decision needed to sentence the defendant to execution.

The first execution in New York in 60 years would have occurred if the death penalty had been applied.

The sentencing marked the end of a trial that included moving evidence from the attack’s survivors and the loved ones of the five tourists from Argentina, two Americans, and a Belgian lady who died.

The defendant was found guilty by the same jurors in January of charges that included supporting a terrorist group and committing murder in furtherance of racketeering.

To determine whether he should receive the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, jurors met again last month for the penalty phase.

Prosecutors argued for the most severe punishment for several days. In their testimony, some of the defendant’s kin expressed their love for him and their desire for him to one day comprehend the wrongness of what he had done.

There was never any question about the defendant’s involvement in the murders. His attorneys acknowledged that he intentionally drove his rental truck onto a congested bike path along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan on a sunny day in an effort to be martyred.

He allegedly accelerated in an effort to kill as many people as he could. When he collided with a school bus, his plan to travel to the Brooklyn Bridge and murder more people was derailed. He escaped the mangled car while brandishing paintball and pellet guns and yelling in Arabic, “God is great,” before being shot by a policeman.

He smiled, according to his assassins, as he requested that an ISIS flag be hung on the wall of his hospital room.

While some states in the United States routinely sentence prisoners to death row, New York no longer has the death penalty and has not carried out an execution since 1963. In a federal court, the defendant was found guilty.

A day after the attack, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that the defendant “SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!”

Since he took office, there have been no federal executions despite President Biden’s campaign promise to work toward its abolition. In 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland put an end to capital punishment for federal crimes, but he has permitted prosecutors to continue pushing for the death penalty in cases that were handed down from previous administrations.

The defendant appeared moved by his father and sisters’ testimony during his trial. Otherwise, he sat motionless with his shoulders hunched over as he listened to the testimonies of victims, including a Belgian woman who lost both of her legs and her husband, who required brain surgery as a result of the attack.

The accused declined to offer a testimony during the trial. However, he gave Judge Vernon S. Broderick a history lesson of the American legal system during his pretrial hearing in 2019, insisting that he could not be held accountable for eight deaths while “thousands and thousands of Muslims are dying all over the world.”

Tuesday’s penalty phase closing arguments included a final plea from the attorneys to the jury.

Amanda Houle, an assistant US attorney, demanded the defendant receive the death penalty for his “unremorseful slaughter of innocent civilians.”

David Patton, the defense lawyer, argued for a life sentence, claiming that if one were to be given, his client would “die in prison in obscurity, not as a martyr, not as a hero to anyone.”

The defendant legally immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010, first residing in Florida and Ohio before relocating to Paterson, New Jersey.

The first such trial involving the death penalty in New York in ten years was his.

The defendant legally immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010, first residing in Florida and Ohio before relocating to Paterson, New Jersey.

The first such trial involving the death penalty in New York in ten years was his.

After their attorneys argued against turning the defendants into martyrs, a Manhattan federal jury in 2001 rejected the death penalty for two men convicted in the deadly bombings of two American embassies in Africa.

In New York, a person was last put to death for a federal crime in 1954.