Disclaimer: This article is in response to questions frequently asked of Mr. Cobb and is an unedited dictation transcript. Just like talk to text on your smartphone, there may be misspelled words or sentence fragments.
It’s a whole lot less than prison or jail. These evaluations cost between $2,500 and $5,000, depending on who you use to do the evaluation. I’ve used different companies over the years. I’ve pretty much settled on using Amen Clinics Incorporated to do these types of evaluations for a few reasons. Number one, they can give me what I need for court, and this is huge because, when I’ve used other companies, they charged $2,500, and this particular evaluation that I want from Amen Clinics costs $3,500. The problem for the patient defendant is because this is not covered by insurance and is money out-of-pocket, they need the type of diagnostic evaluation that is easy to present in court.
When you look at Amen Clinics’ images, they’re easy for a layperson to understand. Now for the doctors, they can cut the brain in slices with their imaging to see how the brain is operating in different ways. They can spin it around, can look at it from multiple angles and look at it as if they’re inside of it. Slices are very helpful for clinicians because they’ve had well over a decade of experience and training, first in psychiatry and then in nuclear medicine, so they sit there in court, and for them, slices are right up their alley.
For a layperson, even someone like myself and I’ve been looking at brain images for over 11 years now on a regular basis, they would look at typical brain images and say, “This looks like two plates of spaghetti.” Now imagine me going into the courtroom trying to show the court two plates of spaghetti. That doesn’t work very well. So I pretty much use Amen Clinics exclusively. They also have an extremely large database and access to a large number of normal, healthy brain images, which I think is critically important. The imaging is going to run between $2,500 and $5,000, depending on who does it and whether or not there’s courtroom testimony, but I strongly recommend using Amen Clinics although I am always open to using other clinics. However, they have to meet one threshold, and that is they must have a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation that I can use in court and is relatively easy for a layperson to understand. Amen Clinics can give me that, and that’s the price range it will normally cost: $2,500 to $5,000.
What About The Legal Fees Involved In These Matters?
I charge more to handle these kinds of cases than I do for a regular case because it’s a highly specialized area of law. It requires a great deal of time, and almost every time somebody is doing one of these diagnostic evaluations, they’re looking at some serious jail or prison time. It might be somebody who has had three DUIs and, while the third one is pending, has a rollover accident and gets a fourth one. That fee is going to be a lot higher than someone who is a first offender. When you’re talking about these types of cases, the legal fee is, generally, going to be at the bare minimum around $7,500, and then for your felony cases, it is going to be $15,000 and up in most circumstances. If it is a sex offense case, you’re looking north of $25,000.
It’s a rather expensive form of defense; however, when you compare it to not doing it, the cost is much higher. When people don’t do it and rely on traditional plea bargaining and criminal defense, the result is they are much more likely to have a period of incarceration, much more likely to have a conviction, much more likely to violate probation and much more likely to have further arrests down the road. So when you compare it to what it will cost not to do it, it’s a bargain. Even at $25,000 or higher, it’s a bargain because of what would happen without using it. There are a lot of people walking around leading happy, fulfilling lives that would not be if they had done traditional criminal defense. It’s more expensive than traditional criminal defense.
It also is, in many cases, the one thing that has the highest degree of likelihood of success. I’ve done this for 11 years. I’ve only had one judge send someone to prison where we’ve done this, and even that time, the judge found that I had met all of the statutory requirements, and that case was appealed. It has the highest degree of likelihood of working, and compared to the loss of earnings over a lifetime, it’s a bargain.
Disclaimer: This article is in response to questions frequently asked of Mr. Cobb and is an unedited dictation transcript. Just like talk to text on your smartphone, there may be misspelled words or sentence fragments.
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