Jury deadlocked in Abu Ghraib civil case

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — A federal jury said Friday it remains deadlocked and cannot come to a unanimous decision on whether a civilian contractor is liable for torture at the hands of U.S. military police in the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War.

But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema was not ready to let the jurors, impaneled in the Eastern District of Virginia, throw in the towel. She dismissed them for the weekend on Friday afternoon to reconvene Monday morning.

“This is a complicated case with a lot of evidence,” she told the jury. “We don’t lightly declare a mistrial.”

Jurors have deliberated for nearly 21 hours over four days in the civil case brought by three Iraqis against a Northern Virginia-based military contractor over its personnels’ potential role in the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted and five others were disciplined for abusing prisoners at the facility in 2003 and 2004 during the U.S.-led invasion. The prisoners were subjected to physical abuse, sexual humiliation and other human rights violations, primarily led by military police who oversaw detainees.

The MPs say they acted at the behest of military intelligence personnel, including civilian contractors, who directed them to “soften up” detainees for interrogations.

The defendant in the case is CACI Premier Technology Inc., a government contractor who supplied interrogators for the facility to supplement understaffed military personnel.

No institution, corporate entity or civilian contractor has faced legal penalties for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The plaintiffs have proposed $3 million per plaintiff in compensatory damages and $32 million in punitive damages. The latter dollar amount represents CACI's estimated earnings through its contract with the military.

The company contends that the military, not its employees, was responsible for setting and directing policy at Abu Ghraib. The plaintiffs don’t allege that any CACI interrogator torture them, rather that they contributed to the culture of abuse.

Since its filing in 2008, the case has clawed its way through legal challenges and national security objections by the United States government over certain evidence. The trial started April 15 and the jury began deliberations Monday afternoon.

Through a litany of instructions, jurors must essentially make two legal determinations. 

First, in a three-part test, the jury has to determine if the plaintiffs were tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment at Abu Ghraib; that CACI was indirectly responsible for those abuses through co-conspiring with military personnel or aiding and abetting those actions; and if CACI personnel were indirectly responsible, that they were acting within the scope of their employment.

All three actions must be proved for CACI to be held liable, Brinkema said.

If the jury is affirmative on the first question, it must then determine if CACI proved its defense: the borrowed servant doctrine, which protects employers from liability if another entity is controlling, directing and overseeing the employees’ work.

Over the week, it seemed the legalese of the defense was confusing jurors. They asked several clarifying questions about the borrowed servant doctrine, which led the court to issue supplemental instructions.

The only question posed Friday was whether the jury could reach a unanimous verdict for some of the plaintiffs but not all, which the court instructed they could. About an hour later, the panel sent out a note saying it was “still not unanimous on anything” and felt the task was “impossible.”

In federal court, verdicts in civil cases must be unanimous unless the parties agree otherwise before the jury retires to deliberate.

Follow @TheNolanStout

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit