NORFOLK, Va., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. prosecutors hope adding a manslaughter option for jurors will make the conviction of two Blackwater contractors for killing Afghan civilians more likely.
Christopher Drotleff and Justin Cannon are scheduled to go on trial next week in federal court in Virginia, The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot reported. A jury in September was unable to reach a verdict.
U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar has not yet ruled on adding a manslaughter charge to the jury instructions as a lesser included charge to murder. The foreman said after the first trial the jury would have been willing to convict on manslaughter.
Prosecutors say Drotleff and Cannon, firearms instructors with a Blackwater subsidiary, shot three unarmed civilians in 2009, killing two of them, after a traffic crash in Kabul.
Lawyers were scheduled to meet with the judge Tuesday to go through questionnaires filled out by 200 potential jurors to get a pool for final jury selection.
Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services, became the best-known military contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its employees have been implicated in a number of killings in Afghanistan and Iraq, the most notorious a shooting in a Baghdad square in September 2007 that left 17 people dead.
