A man who killed eight people with a speeding pick-up truck in a 2017 rampage on a popular New York City bike path was convicted on Thursday of 28 federal crimes and could face the death penalty.
Sayfullo Saipov bowed his head as he heard the verdict in the trial for a Halloween attack that prosecutors said was inspired by his reverence for ISIS.
Saipov was tried in a Manhattan courtroom just a few blocks from where the attack ended.
The 12 jurors deliberated for about seven hours over two days before convicting Sapoiv of crimes including murder in aid of racketeering and supporting a foreign terrorist organisation.
The jury will return to court in days to hear more evidence to help them decide whether he should be executed or spend his life in prison.
A death sentence for Saipov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, would be an extreme rarity in New York. The state no longer has capital punishment and the last state execution was in 1963.
A federal jury in New York has not ordered a death sentence that withstood legal appeals in decades, with the last execution in 1954.
Even before the trial, there was little doubt Saipov was a killer.
His lawyers conceded to the jury that he rented a pickup truck near his New Jersey home, steered it on to the path along the Hudson River and mowed down cyclists for blocks before crashing into a school bus near the World Trade Centre.
He emerged from his lorry yelling "Allahu Akbar", with pellet and paintball guns in his hands before he was shot by a police officer who thought the guns were real.
The vehicle attack killed a woman visiting from Belgium with her family, five friends from Argentina and two Americans. It left others with permanent injuries, including a woman who lost her legs.
“His actions were senseless, horrific, and there’s no justification for them,” defence lawyer David Patton told the jury during the trial.
The defence asked jurors to acquit Saipov of racketeering charges, saying he intended to die a martyr and was not conspiring with ISIS, despite large amounts of propaganda from the group found on his devices and at his home.
Prosecutors said Saipov attacked civilians to impress ISIS so he could become a member and appeared pleased with his work, smiling when he spoke to an FBI agent afterwards.
Among those testifying were several family members from Belgium who were injured in the attack.
Aristide Melissas, a father, said he had challenged family members to race their bikes to the World Trade Centre, with the loser paying for ice cream.
Mr Melissas's skull was fractured and he underwent brain surgery.
Saipov’s lawyers have said the death sentence process was irrevocably tainted by former president Donald Trump, who tweeted a day after the attack that he “should get death penalty”.
US President Joe Biden instituted a moratorium on executions for federal crimes after taking office.
Until Saipov's trial, the Justice Department, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, had not launched any new attempt to obtain the death penalty in a federal case.
But Mr Garland has allowed US prosecutors to continue advocating for capital punishment in cases from previous administrations.
