The judge calls it “the government’s reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.”
*****
Finally, some push back. This thing was highly politicized from the beginning, and the DoJ was right in there, thinking of anything they could possible do to get these guys.
So we take a giant crap on the Marines at Haditha, or the Navy SEALs who gave a terrorist a fat lip, or the Blackwater guards who were fighting for their lives in a firefight in Iraq that resulted in civilian casualties, and yet we release hundreds of detainees from Gitmo because of a lack of evidence during their capture on the battlefield? Pfffft. The enemy is laughing at us. –Matt
Edit: 01/07/2010 – And the Washington Post weighs in with a similar theme. Judge Made The Right Call In Blackwater Case
——————————————————————
JANUARY 3, 2010
Another example of prosecutorial abuse in a political case.
No, not as the left would have it, that Blackwater still exists. The scandal is that the Justice Department’s case against five former security guards for the military contractor unraveled late last week in what appears to be another instance of gross prosecutorial misconduct, as abusive Justice lawyers went after an unsympathetic political target.
The indictments—which were thrown out by D.C. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in a derisive and detailed 90-page opinion—stemmed from a 2007 firefight in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that left 14 Iraqis dead and others wounded. The government contends that five Blackwater guards, who were providing tactical support for the State Department after an IED exploded in the vicinity of a meeting with Iraqi officials, went on an unprovoked killing spree against unarmed civilians. The guards maintain that they came under attack by insurgents and were responding in self-defense to a mortal threat.
Judge Urbina dismissed the charges because prosecutors misused sworn statements the guards were compelled to make to investigators after the shooting, under the threat of job loss. This was routine practice under military contracting rules, though the statements could not be used in criminal prosecutions. Promptly after the Nisour incident these statements were also leaked to the media, which ran with the narrative of modern-day Hessians gone berserk.
“In their zeal to bring charges against the defendants in this case,” Judge Urbina ruled, prosecutors had violated Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination by using these compelled statements to formulate their case and ultimately obtain indictments against the guards. The judge calls it “the government’s reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.”