Army contractor fined $12,500 for revenge killing

An army contractor received a $12,500 fine, five years' probation, and no jail time for killing a flex-cuffed Afghan who had doused his colleague with gasoline and set her one fire.

The immolation victim eventually died of her injuries, but she was still alive when the contractor shot the prisoner.

As horrific as the provocation was, the sentence seems awfully light for first degree murder of a prisoner. Killing a handcuffed prisoner is absolutely beyond the pale.

Update: The contractor was initially charged with murder but the charge was later reduced to manslaughter, an offense which carries up to eight years in prison. Based on the circumstances outlined in the Danger Room post, I think the charge was way too light, and the sentence was a joke relative to the charge.

The contractor executed a prisoner in U.S. custody. I don't care how evil the prisoner's conduct was. In wartime, soldiers will inevitably take prisoners who have done terrible things to their comrades. The contractor ostensibly got an unusually light sentence because the judge agreed that he was suffering from diminished responsibility because of the trauma of the attack. If we let the fog of war count as a defense for killing prisoners, we're opening the door to summary executions on the battlefield. The contractor is a former Army Ranger, so he has been trained to control himself in battle. 

This is a dangerous precedent.

Comments

[parse]

As horrific as the provocation was, the sentence seems awfully light for first degree murder of a prisoner. Killing a handcuffed prisoner is absolutely beyond the pale.

According to the story you linked to, Don Ayala wasn't convicted of first degree murder, but manslaughter. His sentence was lenient, given existing guidelines for manslaughter convictions, but it seems that comparing Ayala's treatment to others guilty of the same offense, rather than a more serious crime would be more relevant.

[Bruce the Canuck]

Compared to death by gasoline fire? That was a crime of hatred of women, and what would the response of the afghan justice system had been? In a country with a working system of law and human rights, I can see your point, and as a vigilante he would have to be brought to trial and held responsible for his crime against society. Though imagining the state of mind involved, I could see Ayola getting off with a similar sentence due to temporary insanity even here.

But in this particular case, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the prisoner. There is little justice there, and the man burned the Ayala's friend to death with gasoline, probably due to her gender, *in front of Ayola*. Such a person is no longer within the human social contract.

[labradog]

The actions of the contractor, as they have been described in this case, would not be 1st degree homicide, as there was no planning or forethought with intent.

[Lesley]

What this story suggests is that military contractors aren't bound by the same rules and regulations as US military officers, and therefore don't face the same consequences for their actions. The contractor got off with little more than someone who shoots a dog. Who was supervising this asshole?

We've seen stories like this before: contractors riding shotgun and shooting anyone they damn well please on foreign soil.

Commenters championing vigilante justice, in this case, and their opinions about whether the prisoner deserved what he got, are as disappointing as they are irrelevant.

[dr2chase]

There's several things going on -- the fact that the contractor is a former Ranger, is not necessarily relevant. One of the reasons to be a former Ranger is that you might not want the responsibility of being a Ranger. If he's not actually a Ranger, he shouldn't be held to those standards.

On the other hand, contractors with guns, how is that not a mercenary? The Bush approach to war is wrong in so many ways, and one of them is this reliance on armed contractors.

[Bruce the Canuck]

>Commenters championing vigilante justice...

There are moral issues on two scales here. For the contractor, I'd argue his act was not 1st degree murder, and was instead a "crime of passion". From the sounds of it they weren't in the "mental space" of war, more like social workers with military bodygaurds.

But the other scale is that vigilatism threatens the rule of law and military conduct. Lindsay's right on that point. Gasoline guy clearly did deserve to die, but I'd agree there has to be some level of jail time as a deterrent to poor behavior within the military (there it gets sticky; he was a mercenary).

Ayola's crime was against the state, not the man he summarily executed, who does not deserve our concern.

[Andrew J. Lazarus]

The Afghan should have been given a trial for capital murder. On the evidence, he would be just as dead now, and in a more just way.

[parse]

We've seen stories like this before: contractors riding shotgun and shooting anyone they damn well please on foreign soil.

Lesley, Lindsay has been critical of Ayala's behavior and his sentencing. Notice she's been able to do so without making the absurd claim that this is an example of "contractors shooting anyone they damn well please on foreign soil."

Ayala had just seen his colleague doused with gasoline and set on fire. If you read the accounts of the last moments of her life, it's absolutely horrific. That doesn't excuse Ayala's behavior, but if you can't see that it's a mitigating factor, I hope you never serve on a jury. And if you can't see that these details are relevant to any honest discussion of his behavior and instead think that "shooting anyone he damn pleases" is in any way an accurate description of his behavior, I wish you didn't have such easy access to a keyboard and an internet connection.

[CW]

But in this particular case, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the prisoner

That's completely irrelevant, or should be. If we start prosecuting criminals based solely upon how sympathetic their victims are we are well and truly screwed.

On the evidence, he would be just as dead now, and in a more just way.

Also completely irrelevant. Surely you're not suggesting letting individual members of the military (or our hired mercenaries) kill prisoners with impunity as long as they "know" that the prisoners are guilty of some capital crime, are you?

[Windypundit]

I'm inclined to forgive an awful lot due to combat stress, including this. The damage stress does to his mental state is as real as a bullet might do to his body. We can't ask our soldiers to endure combat and then complain when something inside them breaks.

That said, we don't want to encourage this sort of thing, so it might have been a good idea to make him spend some time in prison as a lesson to others.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I think the contractor got plenty of leniency when his charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter. I'm not saying he should be locked up for life, or even the full eight years. But he did execute a cuffed prisoner in American custody which is absolutely unacceptable.

Even if we don't care about the Afghan execution victim, think of the larger mission and the other troops who are risking their lives for it. If word gets out that Americans kill (or torture) prisoners, the enemy won't surrender. They'll go down fighting and more Americans will die.

If the contractor was literally insane from combat stress, he shouldn't have been charged at all. But the idea that standard issue combat stress is exculpatory is very dangerous.

The fact that the guy was a Ranger is relevant because we know he had training. Officially, contractors working for the military are supposed to uphold the same standards as the military itself. Yes, unofficially, there's a lot of slippage--but we can't say that the contractor had no idea about the "don't shoot prisoners" rule.

I'd be more forgiving if an ordinary person with no combat training or experience was suddenly thrust into that situation. Whereas, the assumption is that soldiers are trained to see horrible things and still uphold the laws of war. If we're going to say that people who aren't currently hired as soldiers are held to lesser standards in war, then we shouldn't hire them to operate in combat zones alongside our military.

[Alon Levy]

Lindsay, there's a difference between "combat stress" and "he just saw his friend get set on fire." And there's a difference between "Americans kill prisoners" and "Americans kill people who they've just seen kill their friends."

As for the Ranger training, most private contractors are ex-military. In some cases the contractor company functions effectively as an arm of the US government, but with just enough distance to create plausible deniability (the reference here is Corporate Warriors by P. W. Singer). The upshot is that "He's ex-military so he should have known better" is an aggravating circumstance here if and only if it's an aggravating circumstance in civilian trial. If and only if it's standard to discount claims of temporary insanity in civilian trial on the grounds that the defendant is ex-military, then it's relevant in this case.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Alon, Ayala's own lawyers said he had combat stress, from the AP article linked above:

Ayala's lawyers said his experience, rather than steeling him to keep his emotions in check, left him with latent combat stress that reared up as he dealt with the emotions and adrenaline of the attack on Loyd and the struggle to subdue Salam. At one point in the struggle Salam had grabbed the barrel of a soldier's rifle.

"Without knowing it, Mr. Ayala was vulnerable to errors in judgment under combat conditions" because of the accumulated combat-related stress, wrote federal public defender Michael Nachmanoff.

I don't care what horrors he saw. You never shoot prisoners of war. The guy was handcuffed. If Ayala was really insane, then he shouldn't have been charged with anything. Insanity is a legit defense.

Whether someone was mentally competent is a function of their total psychological state at the time including their training. It's easier to believe that an untrained person would just wig out and shoot someone in that situation. When you're weighing an insanity or diminished responsibility defense, it's about the best interpretation for someone's actions. Was Ayala really out of his mind, or did he just give in to his baser instincts? Knowing that he's a Ranger, I'm more likely to believe the latter because I know that Rangers are intensely trained to stand the rigors of combat.

If an ex-Ranger contractor has legally different rules of engagement than an American soldier doing the same job, the contractor should not be in that role. Contractors are supposed to support the mission, not undermine it.

[parse]

I don't care what horrors he saw.

Yes, you make that point clearly.

[Mitchforth]

Lindsay,

This is one of those situations where the rules and policies absolutely should prohibit this kind of action.

However, this is one of those situations where, although we should acknowledge that acceptable protocol was breached, no harm occurred. In this case, the exclusive source of outrage is that the Taliban terrorist Ayala shot was in handcuffs at the time.

The necessary provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter is pretty slight. You can shoot a guy in the face and serve only three or four years for it, if the killing is in response to a nasty insult. The inciting incident here is clearly on a completely different magnitude, which would spur a reaction in a reasonable person in Ayala's place to have a far more intense reaction than the reaction necessary to reduce the culpability of the mental state to manslaughter.

Ayala was charged with murder, and pled guilty to manslaughter and was convicted, therefore on a plea without trial. Then the judge suspended the sentence at a sentencing hearing.

It's very likely Ayala could have secured an acquittal at trial. I can tell you, if I were on the jury, I would have refused to convict this man of anything on these facts, and I suspect it would be pretty hard to empanel a jury where nobody shared that sentiment.

However, when a defendant charged with murder is offered a plea agreement of manslaughter, it is very difficult to counsel him to go on trial for murder and face 30 years in jail, especially in a situation where he committed the killing at issue, regardless of other circumstances. If Ayala had decided to defend his actions, he would still be in jail awaiting trial, and given the outcome, it's really hard to argue with his counsel's decision to plead him guilty.

However, there are a number of incapacity defenses that might have functioned as a complete defense to the charge; incapacity can be similar to "temporary insanity," but it's really more like unconsciousness or a sleepwalking state.

For example, the Black Panther leader Huey Newton was convicted of manslaughter for shooting a two police officers. Newton claimed, on appeal, that the officer had shot him first and hit him in the stomach, and that he suffered a complete traumatic blackout and recalled nothing after being shot until he woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed. On this basis, the conviction was overturned.

Ayala might have argued at trial that the extreme psychological trauma of witnessing a woman who was a close friend set on fire in front of him sent him into some kind of blackout state where he could not have been legally culpable for his actions.

The "combat stress" argument presented by Ayala's counsel was not a defense to the charge, but, rather, a mitigating circumstance presented to the judge as a justification for deviating from federal sentencing guidelines (which the judge did). As far as I know, accumulated combat stress would not serve as a defense to the charge.

[croghan27]

I guess my first question, cynical soul that I am, is how do we KNOW the Afghan "doused his colleague with gasoline and set her one fire" as claimed.

Was this witnessed by others? Was it in public? Was it in the progress of a 'firefight'? Is there any other proof than the ex-ranger's word?

I fear to begin making judgements until the facts are securely known.

[parse]

I guess my first question, cynical soul that I am, is how do we KNOW the Afghan "doused his colleague with gasoline and set her one fire" as claimed.

The information comes from the same witnesses who provided the evidence that Ayala shot Abdul Salam. How is it you don't question how we KNOW Ayala shot Salam but do question how we KNOW thst Salam burned Loyd? Your cynicism seems to be pretty finely tuned.

Did you click on the links provided in the post? When you are interested in learning additional details, that's a good place to start.

[LongHairedWeirdo]

One of the points of punishing people who are in such extreme situations is to remind the next person that, yes, you will go to jail, even if you're under extreme provocation.

It really sucks to put a witness to such a horrific event in jail for taking revenge.

On the other hand, it sucks even more if we let people think they can kill with impunity as long as they can come up with a good reason to be horribly upset.

We also need to make sure that the people around them want to protect them from jail terms. "Yes, I cold-cocked you to keep you from killing the prisoner. Hit you from behind like a total asshole. And I kept you out of jail, so say 'thank you'."

[Lesley]

Parse, you are arguing for vigilante justice based on the emotional reactions of individuals to events. In your vision of the world, if someone witnesses something horrifying they are entitled to take the law into their own hands.

I am arguing for due process of law. I am no less repulsed by the actions of the man who set the woman on fire than you. My impulse too, would be to punish this man on the spot. Unlike you I do not support or condone bypassing due process to satisfy the thirst for revenge.

It's laughable that you would hope I never sit on a jury since by your comments you've stated you don't have an ounce of respect for the law. There's no point in sitting on a jury if your mind is made up in advance is there?

[parse]

Lesley, what did I write that suggests Ayala was entitled to take the law in his own hands? And what have you written that suggests you are arguing for due process of law? Ayala was tried and convicted, but you're unhappy with the sentence. Apparently, you're the one whose mind in made up in advance, without an ounce of respect for the law.

[Lesley]

I'm unhappy with the slap-on-the-wrist sentence because it sends the message to others in similar circumstances that they're likely to get off light. My opinion of the sentence doesn't preclude respecting the law and supporting due process.

Unlike his executioner, the prisoner (also an executioner) didn't get a trial.

There's enough evidence to build a case against private contractors supplying security services in war zones. This is not to suggest soldiers and their commanding officers aren't capable of committing atrocities; we know it happens. But the risk is even greater with these private outfits as they don't appear to be accountable.

[TB]

$12,500?

That's just keeping with the fine American tradition of equating money with life. It's part and parcel of the same mindset that lead this country to accidentally bomb the wrong villages in Cambodia, and then, to "make up for it" pay the survivors XX dollars for every kid we obliterated.

It's another reason why we're they shining city on the hill, and people the world over regard us as a beacon of freedom.

[Alon Levy]

TB: it's not an American tradition. It's fairly standard to put a price tag on human life - e.g. the Dutch did it when they built the dikes. And as for sentencing, usually the US has relatively harsh sentences. In Israel it's common to get suspended sentences for manslaughter if you can convince the judge you were enraged; if the perpetrator is an IDF soldier and the victim a Palestinian, it never even goes to court - some internal investigation concludes there was no wrongdoing.

[cfrost]

We've just passed the 64th anniversary of V-E Day before which Soviet soldiers were permitted to do pretty much whatever they felt like doing with German POWs. And one might argue they had every right to do so. (We'll leave aside the issues of mass rape and wholesale theft from civilians.) They had just had twenty million of their compatriots murdered for no reason by the Nazis. By the end of the war there was probably not a single soviet soldier who had not had a family member or friend killed, crippled, or impoverished. Seeing fellow soldiers killed and maimed in unspeakable ways was a daily occurrence. The Nazis routinely enslaved and butchered Soviet POWs. There were barely any resources with which to house and feed prisoners, and in any case, even if there were, in the final months of the war conditions were too chaotic to permit them to do so. Given all that, would a Soviet soldier have been justified in killing a captured and helpless German soldier? I wasn't there, but I hope I would not have succumbed to the temptation.

As an infantryman my stepfather crossed the Rhine into Germany in the final weeks of the war. He told me that US soldiers often summarily shot captured panzer crews, confusing their black uniforms with the black uniforms of SS troops. He said he was very glad he had never had to have anything to do with POWs.

In the chaos of war it's difficult enough to keep a tight rein on regular soldiers; mercenaries are practically by definition beyond control. Having mercenaries around is problematic in any sort of war; trying to win hearts and minds with them is idiocy.

[Ian Welsh]

I'm inclined to agree that it's highly unlikely any jury would have convicted him-these are the sort of circumstances where jury nullification tends to happen. It's also clearly manslaughter, not murder.