SUSPICIOUS TIMING!!! (hmm...) FEDERAL JUDGE ALBERTO GONZALES THROWS OUT MANSLAUGHTER CHARGES AGAINST BLACKWATER CONTRACTORS!!! ("gon' party like it was 1969, baybeee")
cop welfare
Judge throws out Blackwater manslaughter charges
Dan Margolies and Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON
Thu Dec 31, 2009 7:54pm ESTRelated NewsU.S. to drop charges against
one Blackwater guard
Fri, Nov 20 2009
Blackwater approved payments in Iraq shooting: report
Tue, Nov 10 2009WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge threw out all
charges on Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards
accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, saying the U.S.
government had recklessly violated the defendants' constitutional
rights.
U.S.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said prosecutors had wrongly used
statements the guards made to State Department investigators under a
threat of job loss.
The five guards were charged a year ago with 14 counts of
manslaughter, 20 counts of attempt to commit manslaughter and one
weapons violation count over a Baghdad shooting that outraged Iraqis
and strained ties between the two countries.
The shooting occurred as the private security firm's guards escorted a
heavily armed four-truck convoy of U.S. diplomats through the Iraqi
capital on September 16, 2007. The guards, U.S. military veterans,
were responding to a car bombing when gunfire erupted at a crowded
intersection.
The defendants -- Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball
and Nicholas Slatten -- were employed by Blackwater Worldwide, known
since February as Xe Services.
The company, based in North Carolina, lost a State Department contract
involving security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad after the shooting.
The government had argued that whatever knowledge prosecutors and
investigators may have had of the defendants' compelled statements,
they had made no use of them.
But Urbina found the compelled statements pervaded nearly every aspect
of the government's investigation and prosecution, and the
government's use of those statements "appears to have played a
critical role" in each indictment.
"Accordingly," he wrote, "the court declines to excuse the
government's reckless violation of the defendants' constitutional
rights as harmless error."
Urbina said prosecutors and investigators, in their zeal to bring
charges, had repeatedly disregarded warnings of experienced, senior
prosecutors that their course of action threatened the prosecution's
viability.
The Justice Department said it was disappointed in the judge's action.
"We're in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our
options," Dean Boyd, a department spokesman, said in response to a
question about whether the government would appeal.
Mark Hulkower, a lawyer for the defense team, welcomed the decision
and said the team was "thrilled that these courageous young men can
begin the new year without this unfair cloud hanging over them."
Representatives of Xe Services did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
Urbina prefaced his opinion with a quotation from a landmark 1966 U.S.
Supreme Court case, Tehan v. U.S.:
"The basic purposes that lie behind the privilege against self-
incrimination do not relate to protecting the innocent from
conviction, but rather to preserving the integrity of a judicial
system in which even the guilty are not to be convicted unless the
prosecution shoulder the entire load."
A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty late last year to charges of
voluntary manslaughter and attempt to commit manslaughter, and agreed
to cooperate with prosecutors.
(Reporting by Dan Margolies and Jim Wolf; editing by Steve Gutterman
and Todd Eastham)
===================AND!!!==================
U.S.
More from Reuters Time Warner Cable, Fox at impasse; blackout looms
NEW YORK (Reuters) - About 13 million Time Warner Cable Inc
subscribers were to lose most Fox programing at midnight on Thursday
unless the cable service provider reached a last-minute deal to pay
fees to News Corp to broadcast the shows.