Jury selection advances in three murder, hate-crime trials

Jury selection is underway in two separate murder trials. In St. John’s, Terry Cole, Matthew Kavanagh and Stephanie Noftall are charged with first-degree murder and committing an indignity to a body in the 2024 killing of a 42-year-old Spaniard’s Bay man; the trial is expected to last about eight weeks. In federal court, Payton Gendron faces hate-crime and firearms charges, with a possible death sentence, for killing 10 Black people in the 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooting; he is already serving life without parole after pleading guilty to state murder charges. Gendron’s defense is not contesting his guilt and plans to present mitigating evidence, while victims’ relatives have expressed differing views on whether he should be executed.