Rape case against general unravels as evidence of false accusations emerge

Story here. Reported by the NY Times, no less! Excerpt:

'The most important sexual assault prosecution in the military came apart on Monday. But cracks had appeared two months earlier in the same North Carolina military courtroom.

During a Jan. 7 pretrial hearing, the sole witness to accuse Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair of forced sex — charges that could imprison him for life — took the stand at Fort Bragg to explain how she had only recently found an old iPhone that contained evidence of their three-year affair.

What might have seemed an innocuous discovery was, to General Sinclair’s civilian lawyers, a major opportunity: The witness, a 34-year-old captain, had kept text and other communications with General Sinclair on her computer and on another cellphone, some of which bolstered their contention that the relationship was consensual. They suspected this newly discovered phone contained similar messages.

As the lead defense lawyer, Richard L. Scheff, a former federal prosecutor, questioned the captain, she told a precise, detailed and unequivocal story about when and where she found the phone, and what she did with it.
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But according to a forensic expert hired by the defense, her story was not true — the phone had been charged and restarted two weeks earlier than she had claimed. The military’s own experts reached a similar conclusion later.
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This week, Colonel Pohl stopped the court-martial, sent the jury home and offered General Sinclair another chance to try to hammer out a plea agreement, presumably on lesser charges. The military, in its pursuit of General Sinclair, seemed overly concerned about politics and its public image, he suggested.

The breakdown of the prosecution’s case was unquestionably a black eye for the Army at a time when it has been trying to fend off criticism on Capitol Hill that it is unable to clamp down on sexual assault, which statistics show has risen steadily in recent years. General Sinclair’s court-martial took on special significance because he is possibly the first general to face sexual assault charges, and because his accuser was herself a promising junior officer.'