An appeals court on Friday vacated the first-degree murder conviction of a Blackwater guard charged with being involved in a massacre in Iraq — and ordered a new trial for him.

Nicholas Slatten was charged in the 2007 incident where private security contractors working for the US government opened fire in Baghdad and left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and many others wounded. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled on Friday that Slatten should have been tried separately from the other Blackwater contractors involved.

"The Court concludes that the district court abused its discretion in denying Slatten’s motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants and therefore vacates his conviction and remands for a new trial," the three-judge appeals panel that heard the case wrote in a joint opinion. Slatten had previously been sentenced to a lifetime in prison.

The ruling is a blow to federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, who overcame a series of legal obstacles in the years after the shooting just to get to a trial. The trial lasted months, and involved considerable logistical effort to bring in witnesses from Iraq. A spokesman for the US attorney's office in Washington, DC, said they were reviewing the opinion, and declined to comment on whether they would pursue a new trial against Slatten.

The court also called for the resentencing of three Blackwater guards, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, who were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and using and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. The three had previously been sentenced to 30 years in prison.



The DC Circuit — this time in a 2-1 decision — held that the mandatory sentences were "grossly disproportionate to their culpability for using government-issued weapons in a war zone."