Buffalo, N.Y. — Attorneys for the white supremacist gunman who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket told a judge Thursday that the federal charges against him should be dropped because there weren’t enough Black people and other minority groups on the grand jury that indicted him.

Payton Gendron did not attend the hearing, during which his lawyers argued that his constitutional rights to a grand jury drawn from a cross section of the community were violated.

At the hearing’s start, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo noted Gendron’s objection to the prevalence of white people on the panel seemed “a little incongruous” in the hate crimes case. He did not immediately rule on the motion.

Gendron could face the death penalty if convicted in the 2022 mass shooting at a Tops sup

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