Jose Luis Nazario, Jr.

Sergeant Jose Luis Nazario Jr. (born 1979) is the first American to be tried in a civilian court for war crimes which were allegedly committed while he was on active duty. Nazario was charged, under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, with voluntary manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence for his role in the death of four unarmed Iraqis. for the killing of unarmed Iraqi detainees in the city of Falluja. His trial began on August 19, 2008.

Nazario retired from the Marine Corps in 2005. After his retirement he was to become a Police officer in his home-town of Riverside, California.

The incident became known publicly when one of Nazario's subordinates, Sergeant Ryan Weemer applied for a job with the United States Secret Service. The court ruled in favor of the Riverside Police. Nazario appealed, and, in 2013, an appeals court upheld the decision not to re-hire him.

During his trial five of the thirteen subordinates in his squad testified that they were not eyewitnesses to the killings, but they heard the shots fired. He was acquitted on August 28, 2008.

Nazario's defense team included Joseph Preis, Jared N. Klein and David Foberg, lawyers from the firm Pepper Hamilton, a firm that had worked previously on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

After US District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled in favor of Riverside in a civil suite Nazario launched Richard K. De Atley of the Press Enterprise wrote that court statements revealed that the main reason Riverside had not re-instated Nazario was not that Riverside investigators concluded Navario had in fact killed the Iraqi civilians; rather it was "troubling statements" from Federal wiretaps of Nazario's phone, and a "2008 domestic abuse court action". Nazario had sued, based on the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, asking for $6 million in damages. De Atley quoted a passage from the wiretaps which stated Nazario said: "it was 'fun to ... around with people,' that he gets 'to beat somebody's ... because they're drunk,' ". De Atley noted that the court papers did not include evidence Nazario had beaten vulnerable members of the public for kicks.

The transcripts also recorded Nazario discussing how to subvert the reliability of polygraph tests with another police officer.