## Facts

- Thomas A. Wilkes dated Johnetta McLean; after the relationship deteriorated, he began stalking and harassing her.
- On May 19, 1989, Wilkes followed McLean and her coworker, Michelle Williams, as they drove on the Anacostia Freeway.
- Wilkes pulled alongside their car, spoke briefly, then repeatedly rear-ended McLean’s car and forced it off the roadway into the median.
- As the women were trapped in the car, Wilkes fired at least seven shots into the vehicle, killing McLean and permanently paralyzing Williams.
- Police obtained a warrant and arrested Wilkes the next day.
- While in custody, and without proper Miranda advisement or a valid waiver, Wilkes made incriminating statements, including repeatedly saying “I did it” and telling police where he had discarded the gun.
- The trial court found the statements voluntary but obtained in violation of Miranda; it barred the government from using them in its case-in-chief, while allowing possible use if Wilkes later testified inconsistently.
- Wilkes did not testify. He presented an insanity defense through psychiatrist Dr. Saiger, who diagnosed a dissociative disorder and relied heavily on Wilkes’s claim that he had no memory of the shootings.
- The government cross-examined Dr. Saiger about whether his opinion would change if Wilkes remembered the events and confessed the next day; Saiger acknowledged his diagnosis depended largely on Wilkes’s asserted amnesia.
- In rebuttal, the government called police witnesses to recount Wilkes’s post-arrest statements and called three mental-health witnesses who relied in part on those statements to conclude Wilkes was not legally insane at the time of the offenses.
- The trial judge repeatedly instructed the jury that Wilkes’s statements were admitted only to help the jury evaluate the psychiatric testimony on sanity, not as direct proof of guilt.
- The jury convicted Wilkes of armed second-degree murder and related offenses. Wilkes appealed, arguing that letting the jury hear the Miranda-violative statements in this manner violated the Fifth Amendment.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fifth Amendment bars the government from introducing a defendant’s voluntary statements obtained in violation of Miranda, not in its case-in-chief, but to test and rebut an insanity defense presented through psychiatric testimony when the defendant does not testify.
2. Whether *James v. Illinois* prevents using illegally obtained statements to impeach or counter a defense case through cross-examination of a defense psychiatrist and rebuttal psychiatric testimony.

## Decision

- The District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions.
- The court held that Wilkes’s voluntary statements, though inadmissible in the government’s case-in-chief because of Miranda, could be presented for the limited purpose of evaluating and rebutting the insanity defense advanced through psychiatric testimony.
- The court concluded that *James v. Illinois* did not control because the government’s use here focused on testing an insanity claim built largely on Wilkes’s own account to a defense psychiatrist, and the trial court gave repeated limiting instructions restricting the jury’s use of the statements.

## Legal Principles

- Statements obtained in violation of Miranda are excluded from the prosecution’s case-in-chief, but voluntary statements may be used in limited rebuttal or impeachment settings to prevent the defense from presenting a misleading account insulated from contradiction.
- Voluntariness remains a threshold requirement: an involuntary or coerced statement is not admissible for any purpose.
- When a defendant advances an insanity defense through psychiatric testimony that substantially rests on the defendant’s own claimed memory loss or description of events, the prosecution may use the defendant’s voluntary Miranda-defective statements to test the factual basis of that psychiatric opinion.
- The impeachment-use doctrine recognized in cases such as *Walder v. United States*, *Harris v. New York*, *Oregon v. Hass*, and *Michigan v. Harvey* can allow restricted use of such statements even when the defendant does not take the stand, where the statements are used to evaluate sanity-related testimony rather than as direct proof of guilt.
- *James v. Illinois* does not necessarily bar this limited use in the insanity context; using the statements to examine and rebut psychiatric testimony tied to the defendant’s own self-report is materially different from impeaching an ordinary third-party defense witness.
- Clear, repeated limiting instructions can confine the jury’s consideration of the statements to assessing the weight of psychiatric opinions on sanity and not as substantive evidence establishing guilt.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed Wilkes’s convictions, holding that his voluntary statements taken in violation of Miranda—though excluded from the government’s case-in-chief—were admissible for the restricted purpose of testing and rebutting an insanity defense presented through psychiatric testimony, where the trial court repeatedly instructed the jury to consider the statements only in weighing the sanity opinions and not as direct proof of guilt.


Wilkes v. United States, 631 A.2d 880 (1993)