After a federal appeals panel threw out guilty verdicts rendered by the jury in Slatten’s first trial, and after his second trial ended with a hung jury this month, prosecutors said Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington that they plan to pursue a third trial.

Judge Royce C. Lamberth scheduled opening statements for Nov. 5, with jury selection set for late October.

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Slatten, now 34, of Sparta, Tenn., was part of a Blackwater team protecting a convoy of State Department personnel in Baghdad on Sept. 16, 2007. He is accused of firing the initial shots that set off a fusillade of machine gun fire and grenade explosions in stopped traffic at Nisour Square, killing or injuring 31 civilians.

For years, the Justice Department had been pursuing criminal accountability for the deadly episode, which sparked international condemnation.

Clad in a dark-blue jail uniform, Slatten, who is being held without bail, sat quietly with his attorneys in Lamberth’s courtroom Friday as a prosecutor announced the government’s plan for a third trial. Slatten’s lawyers declined to comment after the brief court session.

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Charges were first brought against six Blackwater employees in 2008.

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In 2014, a federal jury in Washington convicted Slatten of murder and also convicted three of his fellow Blackwater guards of 30 counts of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. Slatten was sentenced to life in prison while the others were given 30-year terms.

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit intervened in the case in August 2017. In addition to throwing out Slatten’s murder conviction, the panel overturned the 30-year terms given to the other defendants, saying the sentences violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

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Slatten’s second trial ended Sept. 5 when jurors said they could not agree on verdicts.

Meanwhile, the other defendants, Paul A. Slough, 38, of Keller, Tex.; Evan S. Liberty, 36, of Rochester, N.H.; and Dustin L. Heard, 37, of Maryville, Tenn., are awaiting resentencing hearings in the case.