United States v. Slatten - 431 U.S. App. D.C. 420, 865 F.3d 767 (2017)

Rule:

The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. U.S. Const. amend. VIII. Central to this prohibition is the requirement that the punishment for crime be graduated and proportioned to the offense. However, this proportionality principle is narrow, and it only forbids extreme sentences that are grossly disproportionate to the crime. There are two types of Eighth Amendment challenges to sentences: 1) challenges to sentences as applied to an individual defendant based on all the circumstances in a particular case and 2) categorical challenges to sentences imposed based on the nature of the offense or the characteristics of the offender. 

Facts:

Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard ("defendants") were contractors with Blackwater Worldwide Security ("Blackwater"), which in 2007 was providing security services to the United States State Department in Iraq. As a result of Baghdad shootings that injured or killed at least 31 Iraqi civilians, Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted by a jury of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence (or aiding-and-abetting the commission of those crimes); Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder. They challenged their convictions on jurisdictional, procedural and several substantive grounds.

Issue:

Did defendants' clean criminal records weigh against the imposition of a harsh, mandatory sentence?

Answer:

Yes

Conclusion:

The court held that under U.S. Const. amend. VIII, imposing mandatory 30-year minimum sentences based solely on the type of weapons used was grossly disproportionate to the culpability of private security contractors with clean criminal records who used government-issued weapons in a war zone and were convicted of manslaughter based on their actions in 2007 Baghdad shootings that injured or killed 31 Iraqi civilians. The court found that an admission that the declarant (a co-defendant) initiated the attack, not the defendant convicted of first degree murder, was admissible as to defendant under the residual hearsay exception, Fed. R. Evid. 807; the circumstances indicating reliability included that the declarant was almost completely immunized unless he made materially false statement. Finally, the court held that defendant's motion to sever should have been granted because the statement was inadmissible as to the declarant.