ABC News99%

Jury selection begins in Buffalo mass shooter's trial 84%

6/15/2026, 8:06:34 AM

Topics: Video
Keywords: Youtube

BS Summary: This video contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Negativity Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with False Dilemma as the most egregious example at 28.9% saturation with 227 hits. Analysis detected 2,302 faulty-reasoning hits from 785 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 75.8% and a BS Rank of 84% (3,537 of 21,887 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 83.80% of the video peer group.

Jury selection begins today for the federal trial against the man who killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket. 
He's already serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole after pleading guilty to state charges in 2022. 
Now the federal government is pursuing the death penalty. 
Now earlier that that year he walked into the Tops supermarket to carry out a plan to kill black people. 
Now about 1,200 potential jurors are expected to come to court starting today. 
Let's bring in legal analyst Brian Buckmire here with the details. 
Brian, the jurors have to fill out a questionnaire today. 
What kind of questions do you think they're going to be expected to answer? 
>> So we would have got to touch on this even before we started this segment, right? 
The difficulty of trying to find a jury that's going to be fair and impartial when a defendant has already pled guilty to a lion's share of what he's being accused of. 
Hate-based terrorism as well as killing 10 people. 
For here I think the questions are going to focus on the punishment, the death penalty, how people feel about that, how they feel about the I can't even say alleged actions because he pled guilty to them in the state court already. 
Are they going to be open to the ideas and the information they're going to hear not only at the guilt phase of the case, but I think especially for both the defense and the prosecution, the punishment aspect as well. 
They lost their argument to move this case to Rochester, so it's deep in the heart of where all of this harm happened and I think that's the difficulty of these questionnaires. 
>> As the defense, how do you argue a case like this? How do you raise reasonable doubt if your client has already pleaded guilty to these crimes? 
>> You find the right jury who's going to push to side the idea that he already pledged guilty and I think even so in a case like this from a fact-based standpoint, it's hard to say he's not guilty. 
I think the only argument here and the only and the only strength of of anything they can make out here is he doesn't deserve death. 
He doesn't deserve death because of his age, because of of the influences that he had. 
I think that's the this is not a case of guilt or innocence. 
This is a case for the defense attorneys at least of attempting to save his life. 
>> You say there may be some issues in terms of jury selection and eliminating certain jurors. 
What do you mean by that? 
>> Yeah, he targeted people of color. He targeted African American and black people and so he's meant to be tried by a jury of his peers, but I can see ironically the defense attempting to eliminate black people, African-American people, from the panel because of who he targeted, his feelings, and how they may, in turn, turn and feel about him in terms of either the guilt or innocent phase or even the sentencing. 
Ironically, the prosecution is probably going to be looking to say, "Hey, you know what? We want everyone, regardless of race." Uh which is not often the the the typical or stereotypical stance. 
>> There are only three people on federal death row. 
Two of them are mass shooters. How likely do you think this becomes a third? 
>> Theoretically speaking, there are people who are for the death penalty, and there are people who are not for the death penalty. 
What I've seen in a lot of the research on the panels when it comes to people, actually, when they sit there, when they're one of the 12 people, and they have to say, "It's my vote that actually is going to kill someone." 
It's not just a belief or a stance, uh that, for what most people, becomes a lot harder. 
I do think there's a good chance that he does get the death penalty, but we have seen uh mass shooters in Florida not get the death penalty for even more serious or more egregious uh types of targeted killing. 
And so, there's a chance, but I would I would toss it a 50/50 at this point. 
I I think he's going to get convicted, but in terms of the actual death penalty, a lot of people shy away from it when it's their signature that's going to end up doing the death the the participating in the killing. 
>> All right, Brian Buckmeyer, thank you. 
>> My pleasure. 
Confirmation Bias
11.7%
Anchoring Bias
3.9%
Availability Heuristic
14.6%
Representativeness Heuristic
2.9%
Hindsight Bias
6.2%
Overconfidence Bias
22%
Framing Effect
7.8%
Loss Aversion
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
25.1%
Negativity Bias
25.1%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Fundamental Attribution Error
13.6%
Actor-Observer Bias
9.6%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
2%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
0%
Primacy Effect
2.4%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
1.4%
False Dilemma
28.9%
Slippery Slope
9.6%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
20.3%
Red Herring
0%
Bandwagon
0%
Appeal to Emotion
24.2%
Begging the Question
5.1%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
13.6%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
5.7%
Appeal to Nature
2%
Composition/Division
0%
Anecdotal
20.4%
No True Scotsman
3.3%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
11.6%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
0%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
0%
Indoctrination
0%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
0%

785 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.