Opinion ID: 1920952
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 21

Heading: Denial of Funds for Defense Experts

Text: Doorbal next asserts that appellate counsel was ineffective because counsel failed to challenge on direct appeal the failure of the trial court to authorize large sums of money to pay a psychiatric expert that was allegedly necessary for the defense of Doorbal. The refusal to approve funds for the payment of experts for an indigent defendant is reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard. See San Martin v. State, 705 So.2d 1337, 1347 (Fla. 1997). This Court has applied a two-part test to evaluate whether a trial court has abused its discretion: (1) whether the defendant established a particularized showing of need; and (2) whether the defendant was prejudiced by the denial of the motion. See id. We reject this claim as meritless because Doorbal cannot demonstrate that he was prejudiced by the denial of additional funds for the expert. The record in this case reveals that after Doorbal was sentenced to death, trial counsel submitted a final invoice to the trial court stating that, thus far, it had authorized the payment of $4000 to the expert, but an additional $2,450.46 was needed to pay the expert in full. On October 29, 1998, the trial court held a hearing on this motion and explained to counsel that all expert funds must be authorized in advance: COURT: Did I ever approve $2,450.46? COUNSEL: You have not approved that yet, and that is my motion to have you approve that. COURT: Okay. And my problem with that is that you guys have to seek that in advance. You can't, like, let your expert do whatever he wants, and then, submit a bill, and by the way, he has to be paid this money, too. The trial court ultimately ordered that the expert be paid the $4000 that the trial court previously authorized, but denied the request for the $2,450.46 that was not approved in advance. The record indicates that the expert did not restrict his mental health evaluation based upon a denial of additional expert funds. Instead, it appears that the expert proceeded to incur fees to complete his evaluation without obtaining prior authorization from the Court, and then sought payment for his bill in excess of $4000 after Doorbal was sentenced. Doorbal fails to assert and cannot establish that the expert did not perform critical evaluations or investigation due to the denial of additional funds by the trial court. [16] Therefore, there was no prejudice from the denial of the $2,450.46 in additional fees when that denial occurred after the expert had already completed the mental health evaluation (and incurred the fees) and had ceased working with Doorbal. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it denied the payment of additional fees to the expert. [17] Since this issue is without merit, appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to raise it on direct appeal. See Lawrence, 831 So.2d at 135.