The Supreme Court's unanimous ruling came in the case of Kenneth Phillips, charged with first-degree murder and sexual assault in a 1991 stabbing death for which the wrong man was sent to death row for years.

Awaiting trial in Maricopa County Superior Court, Phillips disclosed he intended to call an addictionologist and a neuropsychologist to testify during the penalty phase if convicted.

Prosecutors then asked the trial judge to require Phillips to undergo a mental health examination by a prosecution-selected expert.

The judge agreed, but Phillips refused to submit to the examination, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. His refusal prompted the judge to bar Phillips from presenting testimony from his two mental-health experts.

The Supreme Court said both sides in criminal trials have a right to rebut evidence put on by the other and that the state was entitled to have its own expert examine Phillips.

Phillips asked that the results of the prosecution-sponsored examination be sealed during the guilt phase, but the justices said that would deprive both sides of time needed to evaluate those results.

Judges also can refuse to allow defendants to introduce mental-health evidence if the defendants balk at being examined by prosecution experts, the Supreme Court said.

However, the fruits of an examination conducted for the penalty phase cannot be used in the guilt phase, the Supreme Court said, leaving it up to trial judges to decide how to do that.

The Supreme Court had ruled in 1993 that the prosecution has the right to an examination by its own expert in guilt phases of trials, but yesterday's ruling extended that right to the penalty phase that follows if a defendant is convicted.

Ray Krone was tried twice for 36-year-old bartender Kim Ancona's Dec. 29, 1991, death at a Phoenix tavern. Krone was sentenced to death in 1992, but his conviction was overturned. He was retried and sentenced to life in prison in 1996.

It wasn't until 2001, when Krone's attorney petitioned the court to have physical evidence analyzed using new DNA technology, that results indicated DNA on Ancona's clothes didn't match Krone.

The DNA results implicated Phillips, who was imprisoned for an unrelated sex crime. Krone was exonerated in April 2002.

The case is Phillips vs. Araneta and State, CV-03-0351.