Excerpt:
The Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base in Killeen, Tex., won a temporary delay of his trial on Wednesday, after a military appeals court halted the proceedings to allow it time to rule on whether the judge in his case can order him to be forcibly shaved.
The psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, grew a beard in recent months, an expression, his defense lawyers said, of his Muslim faith. Beards violate Army regulations, and Fort Hood's chief circuit judge, Col. Gregory Gross, has forbidden Major Hasan to sit in the courtroom during several pretrial hearings at Fort Hood as a result.
Colonel Gross has allowed the major to watch via a closed-circuit television feed in a trailer near the courthouse.