The lawless demagogue Obama and his marginally qualified Justice Department co-conspirators blatantly ignored the obvious limits of the law and made it up as they went along.
Much of Obama's "ruling with a phone and pen" has resulted in federal regulator over-reach, and inconvenienced many Americans. His amnesty of the "dreamers" has allowed people to remain in the USA, again illegal but arguably compassionate.
The Obama over-reach and illegal executive branch behavior in the case of the Blackwater defendants is much more serious, as it has resulted in one life sentence based on the law-as-cotton-candy theories of Obama and reckless Federal judges. An excerpt from the above link:
Law360, Washington (February 9, 2016, 2:55 PM EST) --The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on Monday threw its weight behind four former Blackwater guards' efforts to overturn their convictions from a 2007 shooting in Iraq, telling the D.C. Circuit the case is rife with "prosecutorial overreaching and vindictiveness." NACDL warned that criminal statutes have been pushed past their breaking point in prosecuting Nicholas Slatten, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty and Paul Slough for the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad's Nisour Square when Blackwater employees allegedly fired into a crowd of civilians.
"A review of the record in this case raises serious concerns in terms of the expansive construction of federal criminal statutes and the extent of prosecutorial overreaching and unfairness," NACDL said.
The case was improper from the start, according to the the group, which pointed to the use of the Military Extrajudicial Jurisdiction Act to bring charges over an alleged crime that happened well outside normal U.S. jurisdiction.
The jurisdiction law is limited to conduct committed while working for the U.S. military, according to the brief, where the guards were under a contract with the U.S. Department of State. They claim they faced incoming gunfire and a suspected car bomb as they secured the traffic circle in preparation for a State Department official's return to Baghdad's Green Zone.
"The plain language of this statute alone should have been enough to resolve this issue, but if there were any doubt, the presumption against extraterritoriality — created precisely to prevent American courts from being forced to confront the types of intractable evidentiary and sovereignty problems exemplified by this case — should have ended the debate," NACDL said. "Simply put, Congress did not expressly authorize the sort of overseas prosecution undertaken by the government here, and this prosecution should have never happened."
I have no relationship with any of the Blackwater contractors. It's just a giant miscarriage of justice which irks me.