Last week, Army Staff Sergeant Shane Werst, recently of Wyoming, Michigan, was found innocent of killing an unarmed Iraqi. Werst was charged last November with premeditated murder and obstruction of justice. According to the prosecutors, Werst killed an unarmed Iraqi named Naser Ismail during a home raid in retaliation for the killing earlier that day of a Captain in Werst's unit. During the trial, Werst maintained that he shot Ismail because he was lunging for an unsuspecting soldier's weapon. A military jury of four soldiers and two officers found Werst innocent in less than three hours of deliberation.

Even after the verdict, questions remain about whether or not the killing was justified. Immediately after the shooting, Werst fired a pistol found in the house into a couch and ordered another soldier at the scene, Private First Class Nathan Stewart, to put Naser Ismail's fingerprints on it in order to make the shooting look like self-defense. Werst claims that they were "freaking out" because they had never killed someone before and that he knows that lying to make the shooting seem like self-defense was "wrong," yet he claims that he had "no idea why he did it." During the trial, Pfc. Nathan Stewart testified that Werst got upset because Ismail lied about his identity, telling Stewart that they were "going to kill this (expletive)," raising further questions about Werst's innocence.

A Navy SEAL accused of beating an Iraqi detainee who later died from his injuries was also acquitted last week.