Legal Standards for Admissibility of Evidence in Insanity Defense Cases

Facts of the Case

Ari Misha Liggett was charged with the first-degree murder of his mother after his mother's remains were found in his car. Following his arrest, Mr. Liggett was interviewed at the sheriff's office and made several spontaneous, voluntary statements before his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) were read to him. During this portion of the interview, Mr. Liggett denied killing his mother. “He also volunteered information about his mental health, saying that other people could ‘shape-change,’ that he was God, and that his psychiatrist could prove he had ‘a completely inculpable state of mind’” (Liggett, p 117).

Mr. Liggett pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI), which resulted in a court-ordered sanity evaluation by Dr. Hal Wortzel, a forensic psychiatrist. In his assessment, Dr. Wortzel highlighted details from Mr. Liggett's conversation with law enforcement, including that Mr. Liggett had initially claimed to have paid two friends to assist in disposing of his mother's remains. During his psychiatric evaluation with Dr. Wortzel, however, Mr. Liggett admitted to making up the detail about two other men dismembering the body. Dr. Wortzel considered this inconsistency noteworthy because it indicated an effort to avoid criminal responsibility. Ultimately, Dr. Wortzel concluded that Mr. Liggett could form a culpable mental state and that he understood the wrongfulness of his actions when killing his mother.

Initially, Mr. Liggett moved to suppress evidence derived from his police statements based on the Miranda violation, and the trial court agreed. This decision was overturned on interlocutory appeal (an appeal that occurs within the trial proceedings), leading to a revised order barring Dr. Wortzel’s testimony in the prosecution’s case-in-chief but allowing the testimony as rebuttal if Mr. Liggett presented evidence supporting his insanity plea.

Concurrently, the state sought to subpoena all of Mr. Liggett's prior mental health records. Mr. Liggett challenged the subpoenas, arguing that the information was privileged. He acknowledged that, under state statute, a defendant who pleads NGRI “waives any claim of privilege as to communications made to a physician or psychologist in the course of an examination or treatment” (Colo. Rev. Stat. § 16-8-103.6 (2012)). He argued, however, that this waiver applies only to a physician or psychologist, meaning that the observations of other medical providers (e.g., nurses and counselors) remained privileged. The trial court disagreed, ruling that the statutory waiver provision allowed for full disclosure of records concerning the mental condition that Mr. Liggett had placed at issue in his criminal case.

During the trial, two of Mr. Liggett's nonphysician medical providers testified, a professional counselor and a nurse who had worked with him before the alleged offense. Mr. Liggett chose not to present any evidence to avoid having Dr. Wortzel testify in rebuttal. The jury ultimately found Mr. Liggett guilty of first-degree murder.

On appeal, Mr. Liggett argued that the trial court had impeded his right to present an insanity defense by allowing his unwarned, voluntary statements to be used in rebuttal. Furthermore, he contested the court's interpretation of the privilege waiver, stating that it applied only to physicians and psychologists. The appellate court rejected both arguments and affirmed Mr. Liggett’s conviction. Mr. Liggett then appealed his case to the Supreme Court of Colorado.

Ruling and Reasoning

The court first grappled with the question of whether a defendant’s voluntary but non-Miranda-compliant statements can be admitted as evidence to rebut an insanity defense. The court’s decision was guided by the precedent set in Dunlap v. People, 173 P.3d 1054 (Colo. 2007). In that case, the defendant, Mr. Dunlap, sought postconviction relief, arguing that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance by abandoning a mental health defense. Mr. Dunlap introduced the testimony of four physicians to show that a mental health defense would have been viable. The postconviction court then allowed the prosecution to present evidence from Mr. Dunlap's competency evaluation to rebut the testimony of the physicians, even though Mr. Dunlap’s statements during the evaluation had been made without Miranda warnings.

The court reasoned that Mr. Liggett’s case was similar to Dunlap in that he had chosen to put his mental state at issue by pleading NGRI, and therefore the holding in Dunlap should apply in Liggett. The court emphasized that the truth-seeking function of a trial would be frustrated if medical experts were required to render opinions on complicated matters like mental illness without knowing essential facts such as those Mr. Liggett had admitted to the police. Thus, the court held that Mr. Liggett’s Fifth Amendment rights were not violated by allowing the prosecution to present his voluntary but unwarned statements as rebuttal evidence to his NGRI defense.

Next, the court evaluated Mr. Liggett's argument that the privilege waiver articulated in Colo. Rev. Stat. § 16-8-103.6 applied only to a physician or psychologist. The court again found guidance in its precedents, specifically Gray v. Dist. Court of the Eleventh Judicial Dist., 884 P.2d 286 (Colo. 1994). In that case, a defendant who pleaded NGRI argued that records from a previous psychiatric hospitalization should have been suppressed because they were written records, not communications made to a physician or psychologist. The Colorado Supreme Court rejected this interpretation of Colo. Rev. Stat. § 16-8-103.6, stating that the legislature had created a statutory waiver to any claim of confidentiality or privilege, including the attorney-client and physician- and psychologist-patient privileges. It therefore reasoned that the privilege waiver was meant to be interpreted broadly.

The court noted that collaboration between physicians, psychologists, and nonphysician medical providers occurs routinely and plays an essential role in diagnosis and treatment. Because of this collaborative relationship, the court reasoned that the same rules of evidence in an NGRI trial should apply to nonphysicians who are working as part of a treatment team. The court held that Colo. Rev. Stat. § 16-8-103.6’s waiver of privilege includes communications made to a physician's or psychologist's agents, such as the nurse and counselor who testified at Mr. Liggett’s trial.

In the dissenting opinion, two justices disagreed with the majority's decision to expand the circumstances under which illegally obtained evidence can be admitted into trial proceedings. They noted that the exclusionary rule generally prohibits the government from using illegally obtained evidence in its case-in-chief but that the impeachment exception allows the prosecution to introduce such evidence in rebuttal of an insanity defense. The dissenting justices reasoned that the impeachment exception should be limited to rebuttal of the defendant's own testimony, not the testimony of others, such as psychiatric experts. The dissenters argued that the majority's decision significantly broadens the scope of the impeachment exception by allowing unconstitutionally obtained statements to rebut the defendants' insanity defense regardless of whether they testify. The justices argued that this decision undermines the protections of the Fifth Amendment and deters defendants from presenting a potentially successful (or sometimes the only) defense.