The issues that will come up will be:
1. Venue of case (DC or Utah). The Federal magistrate (a lawyer, but not an Article III judge) has transferred the case to DC. That decision can be appealed.
2. Jurisdiction over case (MEJA). This will be the key pre-trial legal issue, which should in the long run go up to SCOTUS (simply to clarify what the MEJA statute means).
3. Trial of Merits (Manslaughter). This will hinge entirely on the facts. The basic law of manslaughter is simple, whether under USC or UCMJ; and they are basically the same.
The law of self-defense is going to be more complex. In Ridgeway's proffer (linked above in post #15), DoJ seems to rely on the following as the standard for self-defense:
It will be a long-time coming before we reach the merits of the case (item # 3). In is quite possible that these defendants simply cannot be tried under any law (item #2).6. As a condition of their employment as State Department contractors, defendant Ridgeway and the other members of the Raven 23 convoy each signed a written acknowledgment form, agreeing to abide by the use-of-force policies set forth in the State Department Mission Firearms Policy for Iraq.
The Mission Firearms Policy provided:
The touchstone of the Embassy Baghdad policy regarding the use of deadly force is necessity. The use of deadly force must be objectively reasonable under all the circumstances known to the individual at the time . . . The necessity to use deadly force arises when all other available means of preventing imminent and grave danger to a specific individual or other person have failed or would be likely to fail. Thus, employing deadly force is permissible when there is no safe alternative to using such force and without the use of deadly force, the individual or others would face imminent and grave danger.
Mission Firearms Policy, United States Embassy, Baghdad, Iraq, at 4 (emphasis in original).
The Mission Firearms Policy also recognizes that the reasonableness of a belief or decision must be viewed from the perspective of the individual on the scene, who may often be forced to make split second decisions.
As to the politics of this case, we can be assured that whatever today's politics may be, they will be different in 60 days when the DoJ and Wash. DC US Attorney are re-organized under the new administration.
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