As Trial Begins in Fort Hood Spree, Experts See Landmark Case Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News Staff Sgt. Alonzo M. Lunsford Jr. was shot seven times by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during an attack at the Fort Hood Army base in 2009. He will testify on the first day of Major Hasan's military trial on Tuesday. KILLEEN, Tex. - Staff Sgt. Alonzo M. Lunsford Jr. usually worked in the back of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, giving smallpox shots to deploying and returning troops at the Fort Hood Army base here. But on Nov. 5, 2009, he was standing at the counter at the building's entrance after 1 p.m., so that his colleagues could take a lunch break. "I will be cross-examined by the man who shot me," said Sergeant Lunsford, who retired from the Army and is now a high school basketball coach in Fayetteville, N.C. A soldier whom Sergeant Lunsford recognized, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, walked in front of him. Moments later, Sergeant Lunsford said, Major Hasan twice shouted "Allahu akbar," Arabic for "God is great," and opened fire. In a matter of minutes, 100 rounds were fired, 13 people were dead and more than 30 others were wounded. Sergeant Lunsford, who was unarmed, was shot once in the head and six times in the body. He had played dead, and then tried to exit the building, but Major Hasan followed him outside and shot him in the back, he said. It is not unusual for victims to face their assailants in court, as Sergeant Lunsford will do on Tuesday, when he testifies on the first day of Major Hasan's military trial. What is extraordinary is that Major Hasan, seated behind the defense table in a Fort Hood courtroom, may be the one asking Sergeant Lunsford the questions during cross-examination. Major Hasan is representing himself, one of many elements of his long-delayed court-martial that legal experts say will make it one of the most unpredictable and significant military trials in recent history. "I will be cross-examined by the man who shot me," said Sergeant Lunsford, 46, who retired from the Army and remains blind in his left eye. You can imagine all the emotions that are going to be coming up. Nearly four years after the attack, Major Hasan - bearded, paralyzed after he was shot by the police and thinner than he was in 2009 - will be wheeled into a courthouse a few miles from the readiness center to face 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He claimed to have been trying to protect Taliban leaders from soldiers deploying to Afghanistan, and in his statements both in and out of the courtroom, he has acknowledged being the gunman. Because of the magnitude of the crime, experts in military law said the only case they could compare it to was the 1971 court-martial of First Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the only soldier convicted in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by American troops. "I can't think of a single act of military criminal misconduct since My Lai that was so grave," said Geoffrey S. Corn, a former Army prosecutor who is a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. It's kind of faded a little bit. We have Newtown and the Colorado shooting and the more recent tragedies. But when the evidence of what happened in that building becomes more public, it's very heartbreaking stuff. The Army has spent more than $5 million on the case, surrounding the outside of the courthouse with giant sand-packed barriers that protect against explosions and transporting Major Hasan for hearings by helicopter from the nearby Bell County Jail, where he is being held at Army expense. The Army has also paid for his military defense lawyers, paralegals and experts as well as the monthly rental costs for a trailer next to the courthouse that one lawyer called "the Hasan hut," where he works on his case under tight security. The accommodations underscore the Army's methodical pursuit of its goal - to persuade a jury of 13 Army officers to find Major Hasan guilty and sentence him to death, while minimizing any issues that could overturn a death sentence on appeal. Major Hasan had offered to plead guilty, but Army prosecutors refused him. Acceptance of a guilty plea would have taken the death penalty off the table, because military law prohibits defendants in capital punishment cases from pleading guilty. The judge, Col. Tara A. Osborn, also refused to accept his offer to plead guilty, citing the military law. If the jury sentences Major Hasan to death, the verdict will present a crucial test of the military's death penalty system, which has been criticized as ineffectual and faulty, with appellate courts overturning or commuting several death sentences over procedural errors. No American soldier has been executed since 1961, when John A. Bennett, an Army private convicted of the rape and attempted murder of an 11-year-old Austrian girl, was hanged at Fort Leavenworth. One Fort Hood soldier has been on death row for 24 years, Pvt. Dwight J. Loving, who was sentenced to death in April 1989 after being convicted of robbing and murdering two taxicab drivers. Military executions require approval from the president, and no president has authorized Private Loving's death. Legal experts said it would be 10 or 15 years before Major Hasan's appeals were exhausted, but that unlike in Private Loving's case, the president in office would face public and political pressure to order his execution.