Federal prosecutors declined Tuesday to seek the death penalty for the alleged Walmart shooter who killed 23 shoppers in an El Paso branch of the store in 2019.
The decision is consistent with the Department of Justice’s practice of not pursuing capital punishment in federal cases since President Joe Biden took office, according to local reports.
Patrick Crusius is accused of driving 10 hours from Allen, Texas and casing the busy Walmart to make sure it was filled with Hispanic people before gunning down 23 shoppers with an AK-47 and injuring 22 others on Aug. 3, 2019.
“The United States of America hereby notifies the Court and Defendant Patrick Wood Crusius that the Government will not seek the death penalty in the instant case,” stated the one-sentence filing, according to El Paso Matters.


Crusius is facing federal hate crime charges as well as murder charges for his actions and the case is scheduled to go before a judge in January next year.
In a hate-filled manifesto posted online moments before the attack, the now 24-year-old complained of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” writing that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion,” prosecutors claim.
The shooting came during a busy back-to-school shopping day at the store — a popular destination for residents of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, just across the US border from El Paso.
The alleged killer does face the death penalty in the state case against him. No date has been set in that trial as Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Attorney Bill Hicks to be district attorney last month.
Former DA Yvonne Rosales had handled the case before that, but was forced out of office under accusations of incompetency and mishandling of multiple cases, including the Walmart shooting, the biggest case in the city’s history.
Life in prison is the highest punishment the feds could seek for Crusius now that death by lethal injection is off the table.