"In a capital case, the trial court may compel an examination of appellant by an expert of the State's or court's choosing and the State may present rebuttal testimony of that expert based upon his examination of the defendant so long as the rebuttal testimony is limited to the issues raised by the defense expert." Soria v. State 933 SW2d 46.

If you know that a Defendant IN A NON-CAPITAL CASE is going to call a couple of shrinks at punishment to testify re: PTSD as mitigation, can the State compel Defendant to submit to a psychological evaluation by a State expert in order to be prepared to offer rebuttal testimony so long as the state offers from that witness only rebuttal testimony limited to the issues raised by the defense experts?

For what it's worth, here's a non-published case that goes your way.

Matzen v. State, No. 04-99-00894-CR, 2000 WL 1505969 (Tex.App. -- San Antonio October 11, 2000, no pet.)(not published).

I would bet you could find a Lagrone motion in one of the last few TDCAA capital murder course books. It would lay out how the procedural aspects of the deal.

Thank you both. Capital Murder course had the one Lyn McClellan in Houston did in Resendez & combining that with stolen logic & language from the cases, I made one. Now we'll see if the Judge will order an expert examination to rebut an anticipated PTSD mitigation.

The basis of Lagrone, etc., is that the defendant makes a limited waiver of his 5th Am. right not to testify when he talks to his own expert and presents testimony based on that evaluation.

The same rationale applies in non-capital cases. Or it should. I don't see any other rationale for denying your motion, but I'd be interested to know what the judge says, since this comes up a lot nowadays.

The Judge signed the order. We'll see where the defense goes from here -- other than just ballistic.