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.
Welcome back to Florida Criminal Law TV. We are talking about my favorite subject Crime And Treatment and SPECT brain imaging. The question comes up, “Okay. You have got this real cool technology that takes two days to do a diagnostic evaluation, what the heck do you do with it and how is it possibly going to help my case or someone I love and their case”. Well, the answer is very simple. When we do these types of diagnostic evaluations, it completely changes how we handle mental health issues in the court of law. Normally, when you have mental health issues come up in a court of law, whether they are related to drugs or alcohol or not, you have a specific protocol that you follow that basically results in experts from the field of psychology and psychiatry being consulted and then you have one for the state, one for the defense. And if they do not agree, the court appoints a third one, so you have a battle of the experts.
Now, I want you to imagine, it is 1850, kind of a long time ago, no electricity. And if you are living in the south nowhere conditioning, which is got to be like a punishment from hell itself because it is hot. You do not have all that technology, you do not have x-rays, you go to court and what you have. You have one expert say, “Oh, well, the bone is broken. I felt the arm. I listened to the pace in holler and it seems sincere to me”. Then the defense expert would get up and there is some malpractice case or injury case of some kind, 1850. “I felt the arm, I heard in hauler but I thought he was faking it, and I do not think the arm is broken”. And then, the factfinder, the jury would decide is the arm broken or not.
Now, in today’s world, that is absolutely laughable in the court of law because what are they going to use? You know the answer without me saying it. They are going to use nuclear medicine or, as we more commonly call it, an X-ray. And which medical professional is going to get up and see an X-ray with an obviously broken bone like not even touching, and go, “No. Members of the jury, that bone is not broken”. Well, notice how the X-ray completely eliminates the battle of the experts, they completely did away with it.
Now, with brain imaging, when we use brain imaging in the courtroom, we have to call a physician, we have to go through certain evidence procedures and routines but it is something that is almost incontrovertible. And several things happen. Number one, the prosecutors are generally not familiar with it at all. Secondly, even if they were, even if they were to bring their own expert into the courtroom, they would have to concede that the analysis done by our experts is solid just the same as any expert called by the other party when dealing with an obviously broken bone, would have to say, “Well, that is a pretty obviously broken bone”. The same thing is true with brain imaging.
Now, in our next video, I am going to take this subject of how we use this particular technology and I am going to go step by step by step.
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.
