A military court will begin determining today whether Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan should stand trial as the accused gunman in a bloody rampage that left 13 dead last year on the busy Fort Hood Army post in Texas.

Nearly a year after the massacre, Hasan — paralyzed from the chest down after being shot by military police officers during the Nov. 5 assault — will be the focus of the hearing to decide whether there is evidence to support the 13 murder charges and 32 counts of attempted, premeditated murder.

If convicted, Hasan, 40, could face the death penalty.

The court session on the sprawling military post at Fort Hood is expected to last up to six weeks, according to Army documents. It also is likely to feature emotional testimony from witnesses to the deadliest shooting on a U.S. military installation.

Military prosecutors and Hasan’s civilian attorney, John Galligan, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The proceeding, known as an Article 32 hearing, is similar to a civilian grand jury proceeding, but it is open to the public.

Col. James Pohl, the hearing investigative officer, will oversee the session and later decide whether there is enough evidence to bring the case to trial.

Hasan, who was working as a counselor for troops at the time of the attack, is accused of opening fire on colleagues at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers were preparing for war-zone deployments.

The FBI and the Defense Department later revealed that in the months leading up to the shootings, Hasan had exchanged several e-mails with radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

The communications, which were intercepted by U.S. counterterrorism investigators, were never shared with Hasan’s immediate superiors because the investigators believed the communications were part of Hasan’s research into post-traumatic stress disorder.

Awlaki, a U.S. citizen living in Yemen, has since been designated a global terrorist by the U.S. government, making the 39-year-old a target for assassination by military forces.

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(Source: USA Today)