Brock Verkagis [Associated Press]
Taken from: Star Telegram
A federal jury found Justin Cannon of Corpus Christi and Christopher Drotleff of Virginia Beach not guilty of murder and weapons charges that could have resulted in life sentences.
Drotleff cried and Cannon stood silently as not-guilty verdicts were read.
Their first trial, in September, ended in a hung jury, and jurors in this case, who received instructions Wednesday morning, argued behind closed doors.
The men now face a maximum sentence of eight years and will be sentenced June 14. Both were released in the meantime.
The trial focused on whether Drotleff, 29, and Cannon, 27, feared for their lives the night of the shooting, when the vehicle in front of them that was escorting their translators home got into a bad accident.
Defense attorneys said they fired on a Toyota Corolla driven by Fareed Haji Ahmad because they believed that it had caused the original accident and it had started racing toward them.
Cannon and Drotleff fired about 30 rounds -- Cannon with an AK-47 rifle and Drotleff with a 9 mm pistol. Their attorneys said that they acted in self-defense and that any reasonable person would have done the same thing.
Prosecutors said that the Corolla wasn't a threat and that Ahmad approached only to help the accident victims.
They said Drotleff and Cannon had been drinking and acted irrationally out of anger and frustration on a day their boss had been fired.
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