US Court of Appeals throws out Blackwater murder conviction
By
Matthew MacEgan
5 August 2017
On Friday, a US appeals court threw out the first-degree murder conviction of Nicholas A. Slatten, one of the four former Blackwater security guards who massacred 14 unarmed Iraqis in September 2007 while working for the US State Department. Slatten had been sentenced to life in prison in 2015, and the other three former guards each received sentences of 30 years. The court also ruled that the three other men be resentenced.
In a statement, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit panel ruled that the trial court which sentenced the four guards “abused its discretion” by not allowing Slatten to be tried separately from his three co-defendants. He was the only one who faced a murder charge since he was found to have fired the first shots as well as shooting dead the driver of a white Kia car that had stopped at a traffic circle.
The other three defendants, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, were found to have violated the constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” for their part in the massacre. Thirty-year sentences were issued based on their use of military firearms while committing a felony, a charge that was used for the first time against security contractors who were provided weapons by the US government. All four men were convicted of first-degree murder and manslaughter by a federal jury in October 2014.
On September 16, 2007, the four men were part of a convoy which opened fire with automatic weapons on a civilian intersection in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. One member of the team did not stop firing his automatic assault rifle, even when he was ordered to cease fire. Helicopters were also used to fire into the intersection from…