If Erik Prince cares about Nicholas Slatten’s future, he’ll stop talking for a while. Prince has absolutely no idea how toxic he is in the media, or how his current push for a private “viceroy” in Afghanistan is hurting Slatten’s chances at either having his charges dropped or getting a fair shot at acquittal.
The Blackwater Trial Controversy
Slatten is one of four contractors for Prince’s former private security firm Blackwater Worldwide Security charged in the 2007 shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Slatten and his co-defendants – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard – have endured an on-again-off-again prosecutorial roller coaster since they were first charged in 2008.
The case has been notable for both misconduct and overreach on the part of the prosecution. There’s little doubt that the Blackwater guards overreacted and that their actions resulted in the deaths of 31 Iraqi civilians. But after much back-and-forth, the government charged Slatten with first degree murder. But in the words of Martin Sheen’s character in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam masterpiece Apocalypse Now, “charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.”
Furthermore, charging the men with using automatic weapons in the course of committing their “crimes” was simply outrageous. Carrying those weapons was a condition of their employment, and the law used to charge them is designed to punish street gang members and drug dealers, not security contractors in a war zone.
slatten’s fate is still undecided
There are times when a murder charge in war is completely justified. The case of Robert Bales, the former Army staff sergeant who left his post to murder 16 Afghan civilians, comes immediately to mind, as does the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. But I (and many others) have always believed that charging Slatten with first-degree murder was a political decision. It was based not on what he did, but who he worked for.
Prince doesn’t seem to understand this.
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the weapons convictions as well as Slatten’s murder conviction. It agreed with Slatten’s legal team that his trial should have been separate from the other three defendants because when they were tried together, Slatten was not allowed to introduce the fact that Slough had already admitted to firing the first shots, killing the man Slatten was charged with murdering.
In the first trial, the jury deliberated for seven weeks before returning its guilty verdicts. The government retried Slatten; on Thursday, the judge in the case declared a mistrial, as the jury has been unable to reach a verdict. This week, the government and Slatten’s lawyers will meet to discuss the way forward.
With Slatten’s life in the balance, Prince Just won’t keep quiet
Optimally, the government will decline to pursue the case further and allow Slatten to go free. But prosecutors are not immune from public pressure. The more Prince presses simultaneously for Slatten’s release, while also pressing his case for the privatization of the Afghan war, the worse he makes it for Slatten.
But Prince is incapable of staying out of the spotlight. He thrives on attention. If Slatten faces a new trial rather than being set free, others may not blame Prince, but I will.
