Dalia Dippolito’s lawyer will not have to pay a state expert’s fees for not allowing his client to show up at a court-ordered psychological examination during her June trial, a Palm Beach County judge has ruled.

Marking what could be the final decision he makes in the case before Dippolito heads off to prison, Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley on Monday denied Assistant State Attorney Laura Burkhart Laurie’s request to force defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld to pay preparation fees for a forensic psychologist who was set to examine Dippolito during the trial, which ended with Dippolito’s conviction in the 2009 plot to hire a hit man to kill her then-husband, Michael.

Dr. Stephen Alexander billed the state for several hours of prep work and time he spent waiting to examine Dippolito. Her attorneys had planned to call a battered woman’s syndrome expert as a witness to tell jurors that a history of abuse could explain Dippolito’s seemingly brazen demeanor in a series of videos where she plotted Michael Dippolito’s murder with Mohamed Shihadeh, her former lover turned police informant, and an undercover Boynton Beach police officer posing as a hit man.

During the trial, Kelley ruled that the expert could testify, but also ordered that prosecutors could have one of their own experts evaluate Dippolito as well. Rosenfeld said he simply forgot about the examination appointment and rescheduled for the next day, then decided to keep Dippolito from the exam altogether after he spoke with fellow defense attorney Andrew Greenlee and decided that it could violate her rights against self-incrimination.

Laurie asked Kelley to force Rosenfeld to pay nearly $1,200 for Alexander’s fees, over objections from defense attorney Richard Lubin, who represented Rosenfeld at the hearing last month and attributed the moves from Dippolito’s legal team to being "in the heat of battle."

Kelley denied Laurie’s request in a three-page ruling, saying criminal court rules allow a judge to force attorneys to pay such costs only in very limited circumstances — specifically, in cases where attorneys on either side violate rules concerning the exchange of evidence in a case.

In this instance, Kelley said, the right thing for him to do would have been to keep Dippolito’s battered woman’s syndrome expert from testifying as part of her defense, and that’s what he did.

"The only other possible remedy here would be contempt of court," Kelley wrote in a footnote to the ruling, adding: "However, it is questionable whether an attorney can be held in contempt of court for advising a defendant to exercise rights under the Fifth Amendment."

Kelley in July sentenced Dippolito to 16 years in prison — a sentence four years shy of the 20-year prison sentence she received after her first conviction in 2011. An appellate court in 2014 threw out that conviction and sentence, and Kelley ended Dippolito’s second trial with a mistrial in December after a second jury split 3-3 over whether she was guilty, setting up her third trial in June.