Commonwealth v. Sartin

OPINION

ZAPPALA, Justice.

This Court granted allocatur «to determine whether, in a first-degree murder case in which the Commonwealth intends to seek the death penalty, the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution precludes the trial court from ordering the criminal defendant to submit to an independent pretrial psychiatric examination where the defendant has already been examined by his own psychiatrist and only intends to use his psychiatrist’s findings to establish mitigating factors during the penalty phase if he is convicted. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the Fifth…