WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday threw out the lengthy sentences for three former Blackwater Worldwide security contractors and ordered a new trial for a fourth man involved in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad.
The shooting injured or killed at least 31 civilians and made Blackwater a symbol of unchecked, freewheeling American power in Iraq. Firing from heavily armored trucks, the contractors unleashed a torrent of machine gun fire and launched grenades into a crowded traffic circle. An F.B.I. agent once called it the “My Lai massacre of Iraq.”
Three men, Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough, were convicted in 2014 of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to carry out a violent crime. They were sentenced to 30 years in prison, a mandatory sentence on the machine-gun charge.
A fourth man, Nicholas A. Slatten, a sniper who the government said fired the first shots, was convicted of murder and received a life sentence.
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Defense lawyers argued that the men were under fire from insurgents, a claim that prosecutors denied.
The machine-gun charge was always contentious, even inside the Justice Department, where some prosecutors believed it was unfair to add an extra penalty for using a weapon that the United States government required them to carry.
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