The Associated Press State & Local Wire

June 16, 2000, Friday, BC cycle

Psychiatrist admonished for bill in Resendiz trial

SECTION: State and Regional

LENGTH: 446 words

DATELINE: HOUSTON

An expert witness who submitted a $63,100 bill for psychiatric work in convicted railroad killer Angel Maturino Resendiz’s trial is under a judge’s orders to trim his expenses.
Maturino Resendiz has been sentenced to death in Texas for the 1998 rape and murder of a Houston-area doctor. His lawyers have conceded that he killed eight other people in Texas, Illinois and Kentucky in a cross-country killing spree. All were killed at or near railroad tracks.
Dr. Bruce Cohen’s bill for his testimony is the highest local court observers can remember from an expert witness in a case where the defendant is given court-appointed counsel.
“I gave the bill back to (defense lawyer Allen) Tanner and told him to talk to Dr. Cohen about it,” State District Judge Bill Harmon told the Houston Chronicle on Thursday. “It was a little high. I told him to pare it down before I had to.”
Defense attorneys used the testimony of Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, as the centerpiece of their claim that Maturino Resendiz was insane when he murdered West University Place physician Claudia Benton.
Cohen and Tanner said the bill was reasonable, considering the complexity of the case. Tanner said Cohen wrote a 67-page, single-spaced report on the suspected serial killer.
“To figure out Angel, I had to get the smartest guy in the country I could find,” said Tanner.
But jurors who didn’t accept the insanity defense convicted Maturino Resendiz of capital murder in Benton’s death. He was sentenced to death on May 22.
Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr., who helped prosecute the case, said he might give Cohen $500 if he were “feeling generous.”
“You don’t want to ask my opinion of what I think his testimony was worth,” Holmes said. “You might want to ask the jury.”
Cohen’s bill is about $8,000 more than the fees paid to both Tanner and attorney Rudy Duarte, also appointed by Harmon to represent Resendiz. They received $30,000 and $25,000 respectively, court documents showed.
The psychiatric bill was five times the $12,500 billed to the court by the defense’s neuropsychologist and more than twice the cost of three defense investigators, who charged about $25,000.
Cohen, who earns about $84,000 a year at the University of Virginia, must give 45 percent of what he receives to the school for allowing him to do outside work, said Marguerite Beck, a spokesman for the UV Health System.
“I think it’s ludicrous for any expert to get paid more than what the (defense) lawyers get for the whole trial,” said prosecutor Lyn McClellan, who helped Holmes.