Qualified Immunity of Public Officials

forensic evaluators to be aware of how such factors may influence the court. A final interesting question raised by this case is who will fund the in-depth mental health evaluations considered essential in death penalty cases. The original $2,000 allotted to Mr. Jones’s trial attorney would presumably have only covered a small fraction of a forensic psychiatrist’s 130hours of billing time. It would seem unfair if the ability of a capital defendant to receive a just sentence were predicated in part on having sufficient money to hire forensic evaluators to do extensive work, but this scenario is a possible implication of the ruling in this case.