Federal prosecutors are opposing a proposal that would allow defense lawyers for Payton Gendron to share evidence with the families of the 10 Black people Gendron fatally shot in Buffalo last year.

Families for the victims want to sue online digital platforms that they maintain helped racially radicalize Gendron, who is now 19. They also are eying lawsuits against a gun manufacturer and others; Gendron clad himself in body armor and, on May 14, murdered 10 people with a semi-automatic rifle at a Tops supermarket in East Buffalo.

He set out solely to target Black people in a neighborhood with a large African-American population.

Gendron has pleaded guilty to state murder and hate crime charges in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. However, a federal criminal case is still pending, and he could face the death penalty if convicted at trial. His lawyers from the Federal Public Defender's Office say he is also willing to plead guilty and agree to another sentence of life without parole.

Defense lawyers have shared some evidence with the civil lawyers — information that they say is limited to his computer and cellphone data and online history. A court order has prevented them from allowing the civil lawyers to copy any of that information, and last week the federal defense lawyers proposed a revised order that would give the civil attorneys the okay to make copies of evidence.

In a response filed late Thursday, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office rejected the proposal, writing that there is grand jury information that should not be shared. "Neither the defendant, his attorneys, nor civil attorneys pursuing civil lawsuits have the authority to usurp the privacy interests of many people whose private information was acquired during the course of the grand jury investigation," the prosecutors wrote.

In fact, the prosecutors wrote, the existing order does not permit any sharing of information with the civil lawyers without the court's permission. The defense proposal to share evidence with the civil lawyers could well be an "attempt to distract from the facts of the case (and) potentially influence the government’s death penalty decision," the prosecutors contended.

The possible exchange of evidence has set up a strange scenario, to a degree aligning Gendron's federal defense attorneys with the wishes of some of the victims' families.

Garnell Whitfield Jr., whose 86-year-old mother Ruth Whitfield was one of those killed at Tops, said in an interview that he understood that the prosecutorial goal is "getting the conviction on the perpetrator of this crime."

But by itself a conviction does not tackle the racist undergirding of the murders, Whitfield said. Instead, civil lawsuits could more expansively tackle the bigoted online world of supporters who may have emboldened Gendron into the killings.

"I would not call that justice," Whitfield said of the possibility of a criminal conviction in isolation.

In their filing Thursday, federal prosecutors said they have provided more evidence to the defense in the case against Gendron than required by law "to ensure that there is not undue delay in the processing of this case, to demonstrate the strength of the evidence against the defendant, and to enable the defense team to have meaningful conversations with the defendant about how to defend against the charges against him."

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Prosecutors object to sharing evidence in Buffalo mass shooting case