A federal judge has dismissed all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards charged in a deadly Baghdad shooting.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said Thursday the Justice Department overstepped its bounds and wrongly used evidence it was not allowed to see. He said the government's explanations have been contradictory, unbelievable and not credible.
Blackwater contractors were hired to guard State Department diplomats in Iraq. Prosecutors say the guards fired on unarmed civilians in a busy intersection in 2007, killing innocent people.
After the shooting, the guards gave statements to State Department investigators. Prosecutors were not allowed to use those statements in the case.
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Yes, sadly, the Government prosecutors completely ruined this case. This is from the judge's opinion, in a portion where he's discussing the "Kastigar" hearing that was held to determine whether the Government had met its burden of demonstrating that it hadn't used any coerced testimony: "From this extensive presentation of evidence and argument, the following conclusions ineluctably emerge. In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation. In so doing, the government’s trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise the trial team on Garrity and Kastigar issues, that this course of action threatened the viability of the prosecution."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they had absolutely no excuse. I think all you can really say about this is that even though sometimes they can be used to allow scumbags to go free, the safeguards of individual liberty in the U.S. Constitution are still worth protecting.
2Anon/
ReplyDeleteThanx for that...the legal world can be a jumble to a layperson like me.
Regards/
The other problem here was that the State Department never should have taken statements from these killers in the first place. The prosecutors may or may not have been able to mount an effective case without the immunized testimony, but State shouldn't have handled these guys (independent contractors) like normal Federal employees. Maybe easy to say in hindsight, and definitely easier to say from the vantage point of a comfortable U.S. apartment rather than from the smoke and panic of wartime Iraq, but a damn shame nonetheless.
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