The latest man to face the prospect of the death penalty in New York is James McTier, a 25-year-old gang leader from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn who last week was convicted of a role in three killings.

Photographs of the victims stood on a table facing jurors in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn yesterday while a prosecutor made the case for why McTier deserved to be executed.

“I submit to you that the death penalty is the only appropriate penalty in this case,” the assistant U.S. attorney, Morris Fodeman, told the jurors. “The fact that James McTier was willing to put all those strangers’ lives in jeopardy speaks to the value James McTier puts on human life, and we submit that should weigh heavily on your decision.”

Among those strangers whom McTier endangered were the patrons of a fried chicken restaurant on Sutter Avenue in Brownsville in 2001, about a month after the terrorist attacks of September 11. A gang member beneath McTier raked the place with gunfire during a drive-by shooting. The bullets did not hit a rival gang member. Instead, they ended the life of the restaurant’s manager, Tabitha Buckman, 34, who was standing outside on a smoke break.

Several members of Buckman’s family spoke in court yesterday. A younger brother, Warren Buckman, said he has since named his daughter after Tabitha. He said another brother and another sister have also done the same with their daughters.

“She was a beautiful child, you know,” Buckman’s mother, Pauline Buckman, said.

Singing was Buckman’s passion, several family members said, and prosecutors played for the jury a segment of a video from 1987 that showed Buckman and her daughter singing gospel together.

McTier’s is the first of at least three capital cases that will be prosecuted in federal court in Brooklyn this year. He was convicted, alongside two co-defendants who do not face the death penalty, of a racketeering indictment that included several murders and attempted murders.

The defense has submitted a list of 14 mitigating factors that it hopes will convince the jury to spare McTier’s life, in which case he would receive a sentence of life in prison. The mitigating factors include that McTier was not the triggerman in Buckman’s killing and that McTier “is the product of an abusive, neglectful, and chaotic childhood,” according to court documents. An attorney for McTier, Adam Perlmutter, told the jurors about the testimony they would hear in the coming days about McTier’s childhood.

“Imagine you grew up in a world where the physical abuse was so intense that you will stay outside and defecate in your own clothing rather than come in and face the wrath of you own father,” Mr. Perlmutter said.

Mr. Perlmutter asked McTier to stand up so that jurors could take a better look at him. McTier stood and put his hands in the pockets of his suit pants and bowed his head.