A week of significant hearings in the Aurora theater shooting case begins behind closed doors Monday, as prosecutors and defense attorneys argue over issues of mental health and the death penalty.

The purpose of the first four days of hearings is to determine whether James Holmes will be told to undergo another court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. Prosecutors are challenging the first evaluation by alleging that the doctor who performed it was biased.

They want Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour to order Holmes to undergo an evaluation by two prosecution experts, which defense attorneys argue would violate constitutional protections against self-incrimination.

The evaluations are critical because Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Juries often agree with the findings of the court-ordered evaluation when deciding a verdict.

“The information that will be discussed at the hearing goes to the heart of the case,” Samour wrote in an earlier order about this week’s hearings.

The results of the first evaluation have not been revealed, and to keep them secret until trial, Samour closed the hearings on the evaluation to the public and to victims of the theater attack. Defense attorneys have previously filed a motion claiming the evaluation shows Holmes is too mentally ill to be sentenced to death.

A hearing on Friday, though, will be open to the public. Then, defense attorneys are expected to argue that information gleaned from complex crime-scene reconstruction techniques should not be admitted at trial. In a motion, the defense argued that opinions derived from blood-spatter evidence, bullet-trajectory calculations and 3-D imaging are unreliable.

Most of the prosecution’s motion response has been sealed.

Holmes could face the death penalty if convicted of murder in the shooting deaths of 12 people at the Century Aurora 16 theater.