Fort Bragg General Facing Sex Crimes Defers Plea

In Fort Bragg's first pretrial hearing, the highly publicized military sexual misconduct arraignment surrounding Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair began on Tuesday morning. 

Sinclair deferred the plea on Tuesday morning and will face a court-martial from May 13-24 by a military jury.

The defense team called 10 witnesses to the stand, or by telephone, to report on the nature of emails and whether or not they were considered confidential or marked 'client-privilege', or 'private and confidential'.

The judge, Col. James L. Pohl, tersely questioned one of the defense attorneys, Maj. Elizabeth Ramsey on the relevance of telephonic witness testimonies about the emails saying: "Enlighten me", causing her to give a brief, but feeble rebuttal before moving forward.

The privileged and confidential emails in question pertain to those between Sinclair, his attorney, his spouse and the clergy.

The judge curtailed the line of questioning from the defense often interrupting them to provide clarification and questioned their relevance forcing them to focus on the key issue at hand.

"You have to show that taint was spread to begin with,"said Pohl. "As I understand it, there's a file that sits in your office, so there's a whole world who you could say (they) did see it, but it doesn't mean they did."

The prosecution team of four were all called on the stand to testify and they each reiterated that they had not viewed any of the personal emails in question.

Col. Pohl moved the proceeding along in the afternoon particularly when the defense team made a request to have three of the four prosecutors removed due to their alleged knowledge of confidential emails from Sinclair's personal Gmail account. The judge ruled that the three men on the prosecution team should not be excluded and reminded the defense them that they gave their testimony under oath.

According to a Fayetteville Observer report, some of the Army's top brass could be called up to testify at the court-martial to include: Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who is the Army chief of staff; Maj. Gen. James L. Huggins, former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division; Lt. Gen. Daniel Allyn, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps; Gen. Lloyd Austin, a former Fort Bragg commander -now the Army's vice chief of staff; and Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, a former 82nd commander.

The military judge is no stranger to high profile military cases. According to a Fayetteville Observer report, Pohl has presided over the trials of the men accused of planning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the man charged in the October 2000 USS Cole bombing and the soldiers accused of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and was also the chief judge of the military court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Recently Pohl also served as investigating officer in the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 and wounding 32 during a 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas.

The next hearing dates in the case are set for March 26-28.