Second murder trial against former Blackwater guard results in mistrial
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The retrial of a former Blackwater Worldwide security guard, convicted of first-degree murder for starting a mass shooting more than a decade ago in Iraq, resulted in a hung jury on Wednesday.
Nicholas A. Slatten was accused of firing the first shots that lead to the shooting of 31 unarmed civilians in September 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, the Washington Post reports. Fourteen of the 31 were killed, the Post reported in earlier coverage.
Slatten was convicted in 2014, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2017 ordered a new trial on the basis that he should have been tried separately from his co-defendants. Like Slatten, the co-defendants were military veterans who worked for private, government-contracted security groups in Iraq. The appellate court also ruled that Slatten’s life sentence violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment
During the retrial, which took place in the D.C. Circuit, the government argued that Slatten filed shots into a crowd without provocation and his actions caused a firefight that further harmed relations between the United States and Baghdad, USA Today reports.
Defense attorneys submitted as evidence testimony from Paul Slough, a former co-defendant who reportedly confessed to investigators that he had fired the first shots. According to the Post, Slatten is still in custody and prosecutors have until Sept. 14 to determine if they plan to try him a third time.
