PRELIMINARY PRINT 

Volume 599 U. S. Part 1 

Pages 635–669 

OFFICIAL REPORTS 

OF 

THE SUPREME COURT 

June 23, 2023 

REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 

reporter of decisions 

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NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before 

the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter 

of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, 

pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors. 
OCTOBER TERM, 2022 635 

Syllabus 

SAMIA, aka SAMIC v. UNITED STATES 

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 

the second circuit 

No. 22–196. Argued March 29, 2023—Decided June 23, 2023 

Petitioner Adam Samia, along with Joseph Hunter and Carl Stillwell, was 

arrested by the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration and charged 

with a variety of offenses related to the murder-for-hire of Catherine 

Lee, a real-estate broker. The Government tried all three defendants 

jointly in the Southern District of New York. Prior to trial, the Government moved to admit Stillwell's postarrest confession in which he 

admitted that he had been in the van in which Lee was killed, but he 

claimed that Samia had shot Lee. Since Stillwell would not be testifying on his own behalf and the full confession implicated Samia, the Government proposed that the confession be introduced through the testimony of a DEA agent, who would testify to the content of Stillwell's 

confession in a way that eliminated Samia's name while avoiding any 

obvious indications of redaction. The District Court granted the Government's motion with additional alterations to conform to its understanding of this Court's Confrontation Clause precedents. 

At trial, the Government's theory of the case was that Hunter had 

hired Samia and Stillwell to pose as real-estate buyers and visit properties with Lee and that Samia, Stillwell, and Lee were in a van driven 

by Stillwell when Samia shot Lee. As part of the Government's case 

in chief, a DEA agent testifed that Stillwell had confessed to “a time 

when the other person he was with pulled the trigger on that woman in 

a van that he and Mr. Stillwell was driving.” (Emphasis added.) 

Other portions of the agent's testimony recounting Stillwell's confession 

used the “other person” descriptor to refer to someone with whom Stillwell had traveled and lived and who carried a particular frearm. Both 

before the agent's testimony and again prior to deliberations, the District Court instructed the jury that the agent's testimony about Stillwell's confession was admissible only as to Stillwell and should not be 

considered as to Samia or Hunter. Samia and his codefendants were 

convicted on all counts. On appeal, Samia argued that the admission of 

Stillwell's confession was constitutional error because other evidence 

and statements at trial enabled the jury to immediately infer that the 

“other person” described in the confession was Samia himself. The Second Circuit, pointing to the established practice of replacing a defendant's name with a neutral noun or pronoun in a nontestifying codefendPage Proof Pending Publication
636 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

ant's confession, held that the admission of Stillwell's confession did not 

violate Samia's Confrontation Clause rights. 

Held: The Confrontation Clause was not violated by the admission of a 

nontestifying codefendant's confession that did not directly inculpate the 

defendant and was subject to a proper limiting instruction. Pp. 643–655. 

(a) Stillwell's formal, Mirandized confession to authorities is testimonial and thus falls within the ambit of the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause, which forbids the introduction of out-of-court “testimonial” statements unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant has 

had the chance to cross-examine the witness previously. See Crawford 

v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36, 52–54. The Clause, however, applies only 

to witnesses “against the accused.” Id., at 50. And “[o]rdinarily, a witness whose testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to 

be a witness `against' a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider 

that testimony only against a codefendant.” Richardson v. Marsh, 481 

U. S. 200, 206. This general rule is consistent with the Clause's text, 

historical practice, and the law's reliance on limiting instructions in 

other contexts. Pp. 643–647. 

(1) Longstanding practice permitted a nontestifying codefendant's 

confession to be admitted in a joint trial so long as the jury was properly 

instructed not to consider it against the nonconfessing defendant. This 

practice is identifed in early treatises, see, e. g., S. Phillipps, Law of 

Evidence 82; in the early cases of this Court, see, e. g., Sparf v. United 

States, 156 U. S. 51, 58; United States v. Ball, 163 U. S. 662, 672; and in 

many States with a similar constitutional right of confrontation, see, 

e. g., State v. Workman, 15 S. C. 540, 545. Notably, none of these treatises or cases suggests that a confession naming a codefendant must in 

all cases be altered to refer to “another person” (or something similar). 

Thus, while it is unclear that any alteration to Stillwell's confession was 

necessary, historical practice suggests that altering a nontestifying codefendant's confession not to name the defendant, coupled with a limiting instruction, was enough to permit the introduction of such confessions at least as an evidentiary matter. Pp. 644–646. 

(2) This historical practice is in accord with the law's broader assumption that jurors will “ `attend closely the particular language of 

[limiting] instructions in a criminal case and strive to understand, make 

sense of, and follow' ” them. United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 740. 

And the presumption that jurors follow limiting instructions applies to 

statements that are substantially more credible and inculpatory than a 

codefendant's confession. See, e. g., Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 

223–225. To disregard or to make unnecessary exceptions to this principle “would make inroads into th[e] entire complex code of . . . criminal 

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evidentiary law, and would threaten other large areas of trial jurisprudence.” Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554, 562. Pp. 646–647. 

(b) The Court in Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, “recognized 

a narrow exception to” the presumption that juries follow their instructions, holding “that a defendant is deprived of his Sixth Amendment 

right of confrontation when the facially incriminating confession of a 

nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial,” even with 

a proper instruction. Richardson, 481 U. S., at 207. In Bruton, the 

prosecution introduced a confession by Bruton's codefendant that implicated Bruton by name. The Court held that the confession's introduction substantially threatened Bruton's right to confront the witnesses 

against him, reasoning that “there are some contexts in which the risk 

that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the 

consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and 

human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored.” 391 U. S., 

at 135. 

In Richardson v. Marsh, the Court “decline[d] to extend [Bruton] 

further” to “confessions that do not name the defendant.” 481 U. S., at 

211. Richardson involved a redacted confession that “was not incriminating on its face, and became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial.” Id., at 208. In such cases of inferential incrimination, the Court posited that “the judge's instruction may well be 

successful in dissuading the jury from entering onto the path of inference.” Ibid. 

The Court in Gray v. Maryland, 523 U. S. 185, 194, later qualifed 

Richardson by holding that certain obviously redacted confessions 

might be “directly accusatory,” and thus fall within Bruton's rule, even 

if they did not specifcally use a defendant's name. Gray involved 

whether admission of a co-defendant's confession altered “by substituting for the defendant's name in the confession a blank space or the word 

`deleted' ” violated the Confrontation Clause. Id., at 188. The Court 

in Gray concluded that, when a redacted confession “simply replace[s] a 

name with an obvious blank space or a word such as `deleted' or a symbol or other similarly obvious indications of alteration,” the evidence “so 

closely resemble[s] Bruton's unredacted statements that . . . the law 

must require the same result.” Id., at 192. Pp. 647–652. 

(c) The Court's precedents in this area distinguish between confessions that directly implicate a defendant and those that do so indirectly. 

Accordingly, neither Bruton, Richardson, nor Gray provides license to 

fyspeck trial transcripts in search of evidence that could give rise to a 

collateral inference that a defendant was named in an altered confession. 

Here, the District Court's admission of Stillwell's confession, accompanied by a limiting instruction, did not run afoul of this Court's prece-
638 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

dents. Stillwell's confession was redacted to avoid naming Samia, satisfying Bruton's rule. And, it was not obviously redacted in a manner 

resembling the confession in Gray; the neutral references to some “other 

person” were not akin to an obvious blank or the word “deleted.” 

Pp. 652–654. 

(d) Expanding Bruton in the way Samia proposes would be inconsistent with longstanding practice and this Court's precedents, would work 

an unnecessary and imprudent change in law, and would require federal 

and state trial courts to conduct extensive pretrial hearings. Because 

it would be impractical to fully police juror inferences, the likely practical consequence of extending Bruton here would be to mandate severance whenever the prosecution wishes to introduce the confession of a 

nontestifying codefendant in a joint trial. But, as the Court has observed, that is “too high” a price to pay. Richardson, 481 U. S., at 210. 

Samia's proposal is not compelled by the Confrontation Clause, and it 

ignores both the “vital role” joint trials play in the criminal justice system, and the fact that confessions are “ `essential to society's compelling 

interest in fnding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the 

law.' ” Id., at 209–210. Pp. 654–655. 

Affrmed. 

Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., 

and Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined, and in which Barrett, 

J., joined as to all but Part II–A. Barrett, J., fled an opinion concurring 

in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 655. Kagan, J., fled a 

dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Jackson, JJ., joined, post, 

p. 657. Jackson, J., fled a dissenting opinion, post, p. 667. 

Kannon K. Shanmugam argued the cause for petitioner. 

With him on the briefs were William T. Marks, Brian M. 

Lipshutz, and Matteo Godi. 

Caroline A. Flynn argued the cause for the United States. 

With her on the brief were Solicitor General Prelogar, Assistant Attorney General Polite, Deputy Solicitor General 

Feigin, and Kevin J. Barber.* 

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for Law Professors 

by Brandon Duke; for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by Jonathan Y. Ellis, Gregory J. DuBoff, Jeffrey L. Fisher, and 

David D. Cole; for the New York Council of Defense Lawyers by Harry 

Sandick; and for Retired Federal Judges et al. by Ginger D. Anders and 

Xiaonan April Hu. Michael R. Huston, David Watnick, Keith M. DoPage Proof Pending Publication
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Opinion of the Court 

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. 

Prosecutors have long tried criminal defendants jointly in 

cases where the defendants are alleged to have engaged in a 

common criminal scheme. However, when prosecutors seek 

to introduce a nontestifying defendant's confession implicating his codefendants, a constitutional concern may arise. 

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment states 

that, “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy 

the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against 

him.” And, in Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123 (1968), 

this Court “held that a defendant is deprived of his rights 

under the Confrontation Clause when his nontestifying codefendant's confession naming him as a participant in the 

crime is introduced at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider that confession only against the codefendant.” Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U. S. 200, 201–202 (1987). 

noghue, and Stacie Fahsel fled a brief for the National Association of 

Federal Defenders as amicus curiae urging vacatur. 

A brief of amici curiae urging affrmance was fled for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al. by Michelle A. Henry, Acting Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Ronald Eisenberg, Chief Deputy Attorney General, 

James A. Donahue III, First Deputy Attorney General, Susan E. Affronti, Senior Deputy Attorney General, and Michele K. Walsh, Executive 

Deputy Attorney General, by Patrick J. Griffn, Chief State's Attorney of 

Connecticut, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as 

follows: Steve Marshall of Alabama, Treg Taylor of Alaska, Tim Griffn 

of Arkansas, Phil Weiser of Colorado, Kathleen Jennings of Delaware, 

Ashley Moody of Florida, Christopher M. Carr of Georgia, Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Jeff 

Landry of Louisiana, Aaron M. Frey of Maine, Anthony G. Brown of 

Maryland, Dana Nessel of Michigan, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Lynn 

Fitch of Mississippi, Aaron D. Ford of Nevada, John M. Formella of New 

Hampshire, Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey, Josh Stein of North Carolina, Drew H. Wrigley of North Dakota, Dave Yost of Ohio, Gentner F. 

Drummond of Oklahoma, Ellen F. Rosenblum of Oregon, Alan Wilson of 

South Carolina, Marty J. Jackley of South Dakota, Jonathan Skrmetti of 

Tennessee, Sean D. Reyes of Utah, Charity R. Clark of Vermont, and 

Jason S. Miyares of Virginia. 

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Here, we must determine whether the Confrontation 

Clause bars the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's 

confession where (1) the confession has been modifed to 

avoid directly identifying the nonconfessing codefendant and 

(2) the court offers a limiting instruction that jurors may 

consider the confession only with respect to the confessing 

codefendant. Considering longstanding historical practice, 

the general presumption that jurors follow their instructions, 

and the relevant precedents of this Court, we conclude that 

it does not. 

I 

Petitioner Adam Samia traveled to the Philippines in 2012 

to work for crime lord Paul LeRoux. While there, LeRoux 

tasked Samia, Joseph Hunter, and Carl Stillwell with killing 

Catherine Lee, a local real-estate broker who LeRoux believed had stolen money from him. Lee was found dead 

shortly thereafter, shot twice in the face at close range. 

Later that year, LeRoux was arrested by the U. S. Drug 

Enforcement Administration (DEA) and became a cooperating witness for the Government. Hunter, Samia, and Stillwell were arrested thereafter. During a search of Samia's 

home, law enforcement found a camera containing surveillance photographs of Lee's home as well as a key to the van 

in which Lee had been murdered. And, during Stillwell's 

arrest, law enforcement found a cell phone containing thumbnail images of Lee's dead body. Later, during a postarrest 

interview with DEA agents, Stillwell waived his rights 

under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and gave a 

confession. Stillwell admitted that he had been in the van 

when Lee was killed, but he claimed that he was only the 

driver and that Samia had shot Lee. 

The Government charged all three men in a multicount 

indictment. Samia and Stillwell were each charged with 

conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, in violation of 18 

U. S. C. § 1958(a); murder-for-hire, in violation of § 1958(a); 

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lation of § 956(a)(1); causing death with a frearm during and 

in relation to a crime of violence, in violation of §§ 924(c) 

(1)(A) and (j); and conspiracy to launder money, in violation 

of § 1956(h). Hunter was charged with all but the moneylaundering count. Thereafter, the Government tried all 

three men jointly in the Southern District of New York. 

While Hunter and Stillwell admitted that they had participated in the murder, Samia maintained his innocence. 

Prior to trial, the Government moved in limine to admit 

Stillwell's confession. But, because Stillwell would not testify and the full confession inculpated Samia, the Government proposed that an agent testify as to the content of Stillwell's confession in a way that eliminated Samia's name while 

avoiding any obvious indications of redaction. The District 

Court granted the Government's motion but required further alterations to ensure consistency with its understanding 

of this Court's Confrontation Clause precedents, including 

Bruton.

1 

At trial, the Government's theory of the case was that 

Hunter had hired Samia and Stillwell to pose as real-estate 

buyers and visit properties with Lee. The Government also 

sought to prove that Samia, Stillwell, and Lee were in a van 

that Stillwell was driving when Samia shot Lee. During its 

case in chief, in accordance with the court's ruling on its 

motion in limine, the Government presented testimony 

about Stillwell's confession through DEA Agent Eric Stouch. 

Stouch recounted the key portion of Stillwell's confession implicating Samia as follows: 

“Q. Did [Stillwell] say where [the victim] was when she 

was killed? 

1 This Court has never opined as to whether rewriting a confession may 

serve as a proper method of redaction. See Richardson v. Marsh, 481 

U. S. 200, 203, n. 1 (1987). Because the parties do not argue that the 

District Court's imposition of further redactions was inappropriate in this 

case, we do not consider the issue here either. 

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“A. Yes. He described a time when the other person he 

was with pulled the trigger on that woman in a van that 

he and Mr. Stillwell was driving.” App. 76 (emphasis 

added). 

Other portions of Stouch's testimony also used the “other 

person” descriptor to refer to someone with whom Stillwell 

had traveled and lived and who carried a particular frearm. 

During Stouch's testimony, the District Court instructed the 

jury that his testimony was admissible only as to Stillwell 

and should not be considered as to Samia or Hunter. The 

District Court later provided a similar limiting instruction 

before the jury began its deliberations. 

The jury convicted Samia and his codefendants on all 

counts, and the District Court subsequently denied Samia's 

post-trial motions. The District Court then sentenced 

Samia to life plus 10 years' imprisonment. 

Samia appealed to the Second Circuit. On appeal, and as 

relevant here, he argued that the admission of Stillwell's confession—even as altered and with a limiting instruction— 

was constitutional error because other evidence and statements at trial enabled the jury to immediately infer that the 

“other person” described in the confession was Samia himself. He noted that, during opening statements, the Government had asserted that Stillwell drove the van while Samia 

“was in the passenger seat,” and that Samia pulled out a gun, 

“turned around, aimed carefully and shot [Lee].” Id., at 52. 

He also pointed out that the Government had stated that 

“Stillwell admitted to driving the car while the man he was 

with turned around and shot [Lee].” Id., at 58. So, even 

though Samia's position in the van and shooting of Lee were 

relevant to the Government's theory of the case with or without Stillwell's confession, Samia argued that those statements would allow the jury to infer that he was the “other 

person” in Stillwell's confession. 

Samia made the same argument with respect to several 

pieces of trial evidence. For example, he pointed out that 

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the Government had elicited testimony that Samia and Stillwell coordinated their travel to the Philippines and lived together there. Samia noted that there was testimony that he 

had the type of gun that was used to shoot Lee. And, he 

emphasized that, in its closing argument, the Government 

argued to the jury that video evidence showing Hunter 

speaking about hiring two men to murder Lee was “admissible against all three defendants,” allowing the jury to infer 

that Samia and Stillwell were co-conspirators. Id., at 199. 

Finally, Samia argued that, while discussing Stillwell's confession, the prosecution had recounted how Stillwell “described a time when the other person he was with [in the 

Philippines] pulled the trigger on that woman in a van that 

Stillwell was driving.” Ibid. 

The Second Circuit rejected Samia's view, holding that the 

admission of Stillwell's confession did not violate Samia's 

Confrontation Clause rights. Applying Circuit precedent, it 

pointed to the established practice of replacing a defendant's 

name with a neutral noun or pronoun in a nontestifying codefendant's confession. The Second Circuit also noted that 

its inquiry considered the altered confession separate from 

the other evidence that had been introduced at trial. 

We granted certiorari to determine whether the admission 

of Stillwell's altered confession, subject to a limiting instruction, violated Samia's rights under the Confrontation Clause. 

598 U. S. ––– (2022). 

II 

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause guarantees 

the right of a criminal defendant “to be confronted with the 

witnesses against him.” As we have explained, this Clause 

forbids the introduction of out-of-court “testimonial” statements unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant 

has had the chance to cross-examine the witness previously. 

See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36, 53–54 (2004). Because Stillwell's formal, Mirandized confession to authorities, 

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monial, it falls within the Clause's ambit. See id., at 52 

(“Statements taken by police offcers in the course of interrogations are . . . testimonial under even a narrow standard”); 

Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U. S. 305, 329 (2009) 

(Thomas, J., concurring) (explaining that “the Confrontation 

Clause is implicated by extrajudicial statements . . . contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affdavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions” (internal 

quotation marks omitted)). Nonetheless, the Confrontation 

Clause applies only to witnesses “against the accused.” 

Crawford, 541 U. S., at 50. And, “[o]rdinarily, a witness 

whose testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to be a witness `against' a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider that testimony only against a codefendant.” Richardson, 481 U. S., at 206. This general rule is 

consistent with the text of the Clause, historical practice, and 

the law's reliance on limiting instructions in other contexts. 

A 

For most of our Nation's history, longstanding practice allowed a nontestifying codefendant's confession to be admitted in a joint trial so long as the jury was properly instructed not to consider it against the nonconfessing 

defendant. While some courts would omit the defendant's 

name or substitute a reference to “another person” (or the 

like), it is unclear whether any courts considered such alterations to be necessary as a categorical matter. In any event, 

the combination of such alterations and an appropriate limiting instruction was generally suffcient to permit the introduction of such confessions. 

One early treatise explained that, when “some part of [a 

confession] concerns other prisoners who are tried on the 

same indictment,” “all that can be done is to direct the jury 

not to take into their consideration such parts as affect the 

other prisoners.” S. Phillipps, Law of Evidence 82 (1816). 

Another noted that, in English practice, where confessions 

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were not admissible against third persons, “the names of 

such persons were by most judges ordered to be omitted,” 

but “by other judges the names were ordered read and the 

jury instructed not to use the confession against them.” 

3 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2100, p. 2841, and n. 5 (1904). “In 

the United States[,] the latter practice [was] favored.” Id., 

n. 5. 

Considerable authority supports this approach. In Sparf 

v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 58 (1895), the Court held that, 

because codefendant declarations “were not, in any view of 

the case, competent evidence against” another defendant, the 

trial court should have admitted them as evidence only 

against their respective declarants. Just one year later, in 

United States v. Ball, 163 U. S. 662, 672 (1896), a case involving a joint murder trial of three defendants, the Court approved the use of a limiting instruction to restrict the jury's 

consideration of one defendant's incriminatory statements 

made after the killing had occurred. Citing Sparf, the 

Court emphasized that the trial judge had “said, in the presence of the jury, that, of course, [the one defendant's declarations] would be only evidence against him.” 163 U. S., at 

672. State practice was in accord, permitting the introduction of nontestifying codefendants' confessions subject only 

to a limiting instruction. See, e. g., State v. Workman, 15 

S. C. 540, 545 (1881); Jones v. Commonwealth, 72 Va. 836, 

839–840 (1878). And, though the Federal Confrontation 

Clause did not apply to these proceedings, state constitutions 

contained similar terms. See 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1397, 

pp. 155–158, n. 1 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1974) (noting that virtually every state constitution during the relevant period contained a provision substantially equivalent to the Federal 

Confrontation Clause). 

Notably, none of the early treatises or cases to which the 

parties have referred, or that we have discovered, suggests 

that a confession naming a codefendant must in all cases be 

edited to refer to “another person” (or something similar) 
646 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

such that the codefendant's name is not included in the confession. Accordingly, while it is unclear whether alteration 

of any kind was necessary, historical practice suggests at 

least that altering a nontestifying codefendant's confession 

not to name the defendant, coupled with a limiting instruction, was enough to permit the introduction of such confessions at least as an evidentiary matter. 

B 

This historical evidentiary practice is in accord with the 

law's broader assumption that jurors can be relied upon to 

follow the trial judge's instructions. Evidence at trial is 

often admitted for a limited purpose, accompanied by a limiting instruction. And, our legal system presumes that jurors 

will “ `attend closely the particular language of [such] instructions in a criminal case and strive to understand, make sense 

of, and follow' ” them. United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 

740 (1993). 

The Court has presumed, for example, that jurors will follow instructions to consider a defendant's prior conviction 

only for purposes of a sentence enhancement and not in determining whether he committed the criminal acts charged. 

Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422, 438, and n. 6 (1983). 

This presumption works in tandem with a defendant's Fifth 

Amendment right not to testify against himself, by ensuring 

that jurors do not draw an adverse inference from his choice 

not to testify. Lakeside v. Oregon, 435 U. S. 333, 338–341 

(1978). It also applies to situations with potentially life-anddeath stakes for defendants: A limiting instruction may be 

used to instruct jurors to consider mitigating evidence for 

purposes of one defendant and not another at the sentencing 

stage of a joint capital trial. Kansas v. Carr, 577 U. S. 108, 

124–125 (2016). 

Of particular relevance here, the presumption that jurors 

follow limiting instructions applies to statements that are 

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defendant's confession. For example, this Court has held 

that statements elicited from a defendant in violation of Miranda can be used to impeach the defendant's credibility, 

provided the jury is properly instructed not to consider them 

as evidence of guilt. Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 223– 

225 (1971). Such statements, elicited from the defendant 

himself, are often some of the most compelling evidence of 

guilt available to a jury. By contrast, jurors may cast a critical eye on accomplice testimony—and, in particular, selfserving accomplice testimony like Stillwell's that accuses another of the most culpable conduct. 

The presumption credits jurors by refusing to assume that 

they are either “too ignorant to comprehend, or were too 

unmindful of their duty to respect, instructions” of the court. 

Pennsylvania Co. v. Roy, 102 U. S. 451, 459 (1880). Moreover, to disregard or to make unnecessary exceptions to it 

“would make inroads into th[e] entire complex code of . . . 

criminal evidentiary law, and would threaten other large 

areas of trial jurisprudence.” Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 

554, 562 (1967). As explained below, we have no reason to 

do so here. 

III 

In Bruton v. United States, this Court “recognized a narrow exception to” the presumption that juries follow their 

instructions, holding “that a defendant is deprived of his 

Sixth Amendment right of confrontation when the facially 

incriminating confession of a nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial,” even with a proper instruction. 

Richardson, 481 U. S., at 207. In Richardson v. Marsh, the 

Court “decline[d] to extend [Bruton] further” to “confessions 

that do not name the defendant.” Id., at 211. Gray v. 

Maryland, 523 U. S. 185, 194 (1998), later qualifed Richardson by holding that certain obviously redacted confessions 

might be “directly accusatory,” and thus fall within Bruton's 

rule, even if they did not specifcally use a defendant's 

name. 

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Thus, the Court's precedents distinguish between confessions that directly implicate a defendant and those that do 

so indirectly. Under these precedents, and consistent with 

the longstanding historical practice discussed above, the introduction here of Stillwell's altered confession coupled with 

a limiting instruction did not violate the Confrontation 

Clause. 

A 

1 

In Bruton, the Court considered the joint trial of George 

Bruton and William Evans for armed postal robbery. 391 

U. S., at 124. During two pretrial interrogations, Evans 

confessed to a postal inspector that he and Bruton—whom 

he implicated by name—had committed the robbery. Ibid. 

The confession was introduced at trial, coupled with a limiting instruction that it not be used against Bruton. Id., at 

124–125, and n. 1. This Court held that, “because of the 

substantial risk that the jury, despite instructions to the contrary, looked to the incriminating extrajudicial statements in 

determining [Bruton]'s guilt, admission of Evans' confession 

in this joint trial violated [Bruton]'s right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth 

Amendment.” Id., at 126. 

The Court acknowledged that a defendant is “ `entitled to 

a fair trial but not a perfect one' ” and conceded that “[i]t is 

not unreasonable to conclude that in many . . . cases the jury 

can and will follow the trial judge's instructions to disregard 

[certain] information.” Id., at 135 (quoting Lutwak v. 

United States, 344 U. S. 604, 619 (1953)). It even acknowledged that, “[i]f it were true that the jury disregarded the 

reference to [Bruton], no question would arise under the 

Confrontation Clause.” 391 U. S., at 126. Yet, the Court 

reasoned that “there are some contexts in which the risk 

that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so 

great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defend-
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Opinion of the Court 

ant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored.” Id., at 135. Accordingly, in the 

Court's view, “the introduction of Evans' confession posed a 

substantial threat to [Bruton]'s right to confront the witnesses against him.” Id., at 137. 

2 

Later, in Richardson, the Court declined to expand the 

Bruton rule to a redacted confession that inculpated the defendant only when viewed in conjunction with other evidence. There, Clarissa Marsh, Benjamin Williams, and Kareem Martin were each charged with assault and murder. 

481 U. S., at 202. Marsh and Williams were tried jointly for 

the crime. Ibid. And, at trial, the State introduced Williams' confession, taken by police shortly after his arrest. 

Id., at 203. As introduced, however, “[t]he confession was 

redacted to omit all reference to [Marsh]—indeed, to omit 

all indication that anyone other than Martin and Williams 

participated in the crime.” Ibid. The confession largely 

corroborated the victim's testimony and additionally described a conversation between Williams and Martin as they 

drove to the scene of the crime: “[A]ccording to Williams, 

Martin said that he would have to kill the victims after the 

robbery.” Id., at 204. Following the confession's admission, the trial judge instructed the jury not to use it against 

Marsh in any way, an instruction reiterated in the jury 

charge at the conclusion of trial. Id., at 204–205. In her 

testimony, however, Marsh volunteered that, during the 

drive to the crime scene, she “ `knew that [Martin and Williams] were talking' but could not hear the conversation because `the radio was on and the speaker was right in [her] 

ear.' ” Id., at 204 (alternations in original). Both Marsh 

and Williams were convicted. Id., at 205. 

In considering the introduction of Williams' confession, 

this Court noted that, “[o]rdinarily, a witness whose testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to be a 

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witness `against' a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider that testimony only against a codefendant,” emphasizing the “almost invariable assumption of the law that jurors 

follow their instructions.” Id., at 206. It then explained 

that Bruton represented a “narrow exception to this principle.” 481 U. S., at 207. Whereas the confession in Bruton 

had “ `expressly implicat[ed]' the defendant as his accomplice,” the confession in Richardson “was not incriminating 

on its face, and became so only when linked with evidence 

introduced later at trial.” 481 U. S., at 208 (citing Bruton, 

391 U. S., at 124, n. 1). The former evidence, the Court explained, is “more vivid” and thus “more diffcult to thrust 

out of mind.” 481 U. S., at 208. Additionally, in the case of 

inferential incrimination, the Court posited that “the judge's 

instruction may well be successful in dissuading the jury 

from entering onto the path of inference,” leaving “no incrimination to forget.” Ibid.2 

3 

Gray then confronted a question Richardson expressly 

left open: whether a confession altered “by substituting 

for the defendant's name in the confession a blank space or 

the word `deleted' ” violated the Confrontation Clause. 523 

U. S., at 188; see also Richardson, 481 U. S., at 211, n. 5. 

In Gray, the Court considered Anthony Bell's confession to 

Baltimore police, implicating himself, Kevin Gray, and coconspirator Jacquin Vanlandingham in a murder. 523 U. S., 

at 188. The prosecution sought to introduce the confession 

at trial, and the trial judge required that it be redacted to 

2 The Court ended on a cautionary note, explaining that the prosecutor 

had linked Marsh with Williams' confession in his closing argument. 

Thus, the Court observed, “the prosecutor [had] sought to undo the effect 

of the limiting instruction by urging the jury to use Williams' confession 

in evaluating [Marsh's] case.” 481 U. S., at 211. If a claim of error on 

this count were preserved, the Court suggested that relief could be appropriate. Ibid. 

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Opinion of the Court 

use the word “deleted” or “deletion” whenever Gray's or 

Vanlandingham's names appeared. Ibid. At trial, the 

prosecution had a police detective read the confession aloud 

to the jury verbatim, substituting the words “deleted” or 

“deletion” for Gray's or Vanlandingham's names.3 Ibid. 

“Immediately after” the detective fnished reading the confession, “the prosecutor asked, `after he gave you that information, you subsequently were able to arrest Mr. Kevin 

Gray; is that correct?' The offcer responded, `That's correct.' ” Id., at 188–189. In instructing the jury at the close 

of trial, the judge specifed that Bell's confession was evidence only against Bell, admonishing the jury not to use the 

confession as evidence against Gray. Id., at 189. The jury 

convicted Bell and Gray. 

This Court held that the confession was inadmissible under 

Bruton. It frst noted that, “unlike Richardson's redacted 

confession, [Bell's] confession refer[red] directly to the `existence' of the nonconfessing defendant.” 523 U. S., at 192. 

The Court then concluded that, when a redacted confession 

“simply replace[s] a name with an obvious blank space or a 

word such as `deleted' or a symbol or other similarly obvious 

indications of alteration,” the evidence “so closely resemble[s] Bruton's unredacted statements that . . . the law must 

require the same result.” Ibid. The Court reasoned that 

such “obvious blank[s]” would cause the jurors to speculate 

as to whom the omitted individual may be, “lift[ing their] 

eyes to [the nonconfessing defendant], sitting at counsel 

table, to fnd what will seem the obvious answer,” as the 

judge's “instruction will provide an obvious reason for the 

blank.” Id., at 193. It also reasoned that “statements redacted to leave a blank or some other similarly obvious alteration” were “directly accusatory,” “point[ing] directly to the 

defendant . . . in a manner similar to Evans' use of Bruton's 

3 The prosecution also introduced a written copy of the confession with 

Gray's and Vanlandigham's names omitted, “leaving in their place blank 

white spaces separated by commas.” Gray, 523 U. S., at 189. 

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Opinion of the Court 

name or to a testifying codefendant's accusatory fnger.” 

Id., at 194. 

While the Court “concede[d] that Richardson placed outside the scope of Bruton's rule those statements that incriminate inferentially,” it explained that “inference pure and 

simple cannot make the critical difference, for if it did, then 

Richardson would also place outside Bruton's scope confessions that use shortened frst names, nicknames, [and] descriptions as unique as the `red-haired, bearded, one-eyed 

man-with-a-limp.' ” Id., at 195. The Court elaborated: 

“That being so, Richardson must depend in signifcant 

part upon the kind of, not the simple fact of, inference. 

Richardson's inferences involved statements that did 

not refer directly to the defendant himself and which 

became incriminating `only when linked with evidence 

introduced later at trial.' 481 U. S., at 208. The inferences at issue here involve statements that, despite redaction, obviously refer directly to someone, often obviously the defendant, and which involve inferences that a 

jury ordinarily could make immediately, even were the 

confession the very frst item introduced at trial.” Id., 

at 196. 

Finally, the Court stressed that its holding, which addressed 

only obviously redacted confessions, was suffciently narrow 

to avoid “unnecessarily lead[ing] prosecutors to abandon the 

[relevant] confession or joint trial.” Id., at 197. 

B 

Viewed together, the Court's precedents distinguish between confessions that directly implicate a defendant and 

those that do so indirectly. Richardson explicitly declined 

to extend Bruton's “narrow exception” to the presumption 

that jurors follow their instructions beyond those confessions 

that occupy the former category. 481 U. S., at 207. Gray 

qualifed but confrmed this legal standard, reiterating that 

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Opinion of the Court 

the Bruton rule applies only to “directly accusatory” incriminating statements, as distinct from those that do “not refer 

directly to the defendant” and “bec[o]me incriminating only 

when linked with evidence introduced later at trial.” 523 

U. S., at 194, 196 (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, neither Bruton, Richardson, nor Gray provides 

license to fyspeck trial transcripts in search of evidence that 

could give rise to a collateral inference that the defendant 

had been named in an altered confession. 

Here, the District Court's admission of Stillwell's confession, accompanied by a limiting instruction, did not run afoul 

of this Court's precedents. Stillwell's confession was redacted to avoid naming Samia, satisfying Bruton's rule. 

And, it was not obviously redacted in a manner resembling 

the confession in Gray; the neutral references to some “other 

person” were not akin to an obvious blank or the word “deleted.” In fact, the redacted confession is strikingly similar 

to a hypothetical modifed confession we looked upon favorably in Gray, where we posited that, instead of saying “ `[m]e, 

deleted, deleted, and a few other guys,' ” the witness could 

easily have said “ `[m]e and a few other guys.' ” 523 U. S., 

at 196. Accordingly, it “fall[s] outside the narrow exception 

[Bruton] created.” Richardson, 481 U. S., at 208. 

Moreover, it would not have been feasible to further modify Stillwell's confession to make it appear, as in Richardson, 

that he had acted alone. Stillwell was charged with conspiracy and did not confess to shooting Lee. Consequently, the 

evidence of coordination between Stillwell and Lee's killer 

(whether Samia or not) was necessary to prove an essential 

element of the Government's case. In addition, editing the 

statement to exclude mention of the “other person” may 

have made it seem as though Stillwell and Lee were alone in 

the van at the time Lee was shot. Such a scenario may have 

led the jurors—who sat in judgment of both Samia and Stillwell—to conclude that Stillwell was the shooter, an obviously 

prejudicial result. 

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IV 

As described above, expanding the Bruton rule in the way 

Samia proposes would be inconsistent with longstanding 

practice and our precedents. It would also work an unnecessary and imprudent change in law, resulting in precisely the practical effects that the Court rejected in Richardson. The Confrontation Clause rule that Samia proposes 

would require federal and state trial courts to conduct extensive pretrial hearings to determine whether the jury could 

infer from the Government's case in its entirety that the defendant had been named in an altered confession. See Brief 

for Petitioner 16. That approach would be burdensome and 

“far from foolproof,” 481 U. S., at 209, and we decline to endorse it. 

Indeed, it would be impractical to fully police juror inferences in the way Samia seems to suggest; in a criminal trial, 

all evidence that supports the prosecution's theory of the 

case is, to some extent, mutually reinforcing. Thus, the 

likely practical consequence of Samia's position would be to 

mandate severance whenever the prosecution wishes to introduce the confession of a nontestifying codefendant in a 

joint trial. But, as this Court has observed, that is “too 

high” a price to pay. Id., at 210. Joint trials have long 

“play[ed] a vital role in the criminal justice system,” preserving government resources and allowing victims to avoid repeatedly reliving trauma. Id., at 209; see also United States 

v. Marchant, 12 Wheat. 480, 482–483, 485 (1827) (Story, J.) 

(recognizing the crucial role of joint trials). Further, joint 

trials encourage consistent verdicts and enable more accurate assessments of relative culpability. See Bruton, 391 

U. S., at 143 (White, J., dissenting) (“[S]eparate trials are apt 

to have varying consequences for legally indistinguishable 

defendants”). Also, separate trials “randomly favo[r] the 

last-tried defendants who have the advantage of knowing 

the prosecution's case beforehand.” Richardson, 481 U. S., 

at 210. 

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Opinion of Barrett, J. 

Samia offers, as an alternative, that the Government may 

choose to forgo use of the confession entirely, thereby avoiding the need for severance. But, this ignores the fact that 

confessions are “ `essential to society's compelling interest 

in fnding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the 

law.' ” Ibid. And, as described above, Samia's proposal is 

not compelled by the Confrontation Clause. 

* * * 

The Confrontation Clause ensures that defendants have 

the opportunity to confront witnesses against them, but it 

does not provide a freestanding guarantee against the risk 

of potential prejudice that may arise inferentially in a joint 

trial. Here, the Clause was not violated by the admission of 

a nontestifying codefendant's confession that did not directly 

inculpate the defendant and was subject to a proper limiting instruction. 

We therefore affrm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. 

It is so ordered. 

Justice Barrett, concurring in part and concurring in 

the judgment. 

I agree that the admission of Stillwell's modifed confession, together with a limiting instruction, did not violate the 

Confrontation Clause. But in my view, the historical evidence described in Part II–A, ante, is beside the point. 

First is a timing problem. The evidence is largely from 

the late 19th and early 20th centuries—far too late to inform 

the meaning of the Confrontation Clause “at the time of the 

founding.” Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36, 54 (2004). 

The Court seems to agree, because it does not suggest that 

the history is probative of original meaning. But nor does 

it explain why this seemingly random time period matters. 

For whatever reason (the parties only speculate), there appears to be little founding-era evidence illustrating how 

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courts handled the admission of a codefendant's confession. 

So why not simply say that the history is inconclusive? And 

if we are going to pick up the thread in 1878, why drop it in 

1896? Ante, at 645. Are cases from 1896 that much more 

important than cases from, say, the 1940s? While the Court 

makes a claim about “longstanding practice” for “most of our 

Nation's history,” ante, at 644, it describes only a snapshot. 

That brings me to my second problem: the substance of 

the snapshot. The cited cases address the rules of evidence 

rather than the Confrontation Clause. Ante, at 644–646. On 

top of that, the two federal cases do not discuss the effectiveness of limiting instructions, much less any need for redaction. Sparf v. United States holds that the co-conspirator 

exception to the hearsay rule does not apply to statements 

made after the conspiracy has ended. 156 U. S. 51, 56 (1895). 

Emphasizing the trial court's error in admitting the statements against both defendants, the Court explained that the 

trial court should have admitted them against the speaker 

and excluded them against his codefendant. Id., at 58. 

Neither limiting instructions nor redaction came up. 

United States v. Ball is similarly tangential to Samia's case. 

163 U. S. 662 (1896). There, the Court held that the trial 

court had not abused its discretion in trying three codefendants together. Id., at 672. As support for that point, the 

Court noted that when the Government introduced the admissions of one defendant, “the [trial] court at once said, in 

the presence of the jury, that, of course, it would be only 

evidence against him, if he said anything; and the court was 

not afterwards requested to make any further ruling upon 

this point.” Ibid. The Court assumed in passing that the 

limiting instruction was effective—but the codefendants did 

not argue otherwise, and they did not ask the court to alter 

the statements. 

The two state cases at least address (and endorse) the use 

of a limiting instruction after the admission of a codefendant's confession. State v. Workman, 15 S. C. 540, 545 (1881); 
Cite as: 599 U. S. 635 (2023) 657 

Kagan, J., dissenting 

Jones v. Commonwealth, 72 Va. 836, 839–840 (1878). One 

even holds that a trial court should not alter a statement by 

redacting a codefendant's name. Workman, 15 S. C., at 545. 

Like the federal cases, though, the state cases make no mention of the confrontation right. Same for the treatises cited 

by the Court. See S. Phillipps, Law of Evidence *82–*83 

(1816); 3 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2100, p. 2841, and n. 5 (1904). 

So for all we know, the cases cited by the Court and the 

treatises proceed from the premise that an ordinary hearsay 

rule, as opposed to a constitutional right, was on the line. 

That weakens the importance of these sources, because 

courts might have gone to greater lengths (for example, redaction) to ensure that a jury did not consider a declaration 

whose admission would violate the State or Federal Constitution. Bruton v. United States, after all, grounds itself in 

the Sixth Amendment. 391 U. S. 123, 126 (1968). 

At best, the evidence recounted in Part II–A shows that, 

during a narrow historical period, some courts assumed and 

others expressly held that a limiting instruction suffciently 

protected a codefendant from a declaration inadmissible on 

hearsay grounds. In suggesting anything more, the Court 

overclaims. That is unfortunate. While history is often 

important and sometimes dispositive, we should be discriminating in its use. Otherwise, we risk undermining the force 

of historical arguments when they matter most. 

Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Sotomayor and 

Justice Jackson join, dissenting. 

Imagine a criminal case involving two defendants—John 

and Mary. John and Mary are arrested for robbing Bill. 

Before trial, John confesses to the robbery in an interview 

with police. But John does more than admit his own 

involvement; he also points a fnger at Mary. John says to 

the police: “Mary and I went out Saturday night and robbed 

Bill.” Mary, on the other hand, never confesses to the robbery. She maintains that she wasn't involved—in fact, that 

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she never left her home on the night in question. The government tries John and Mary together. At trial, it introduces a copy of John's confession into evidence, and has it 

read to the jury by the interviewing offcer. But John elects 

not to take the stand, leaving Mary's attorney without an 

opportunity to cross-examine him about his confession. 

This Court's precedent bars the government from using 

John's confession in that way. The Confrontation Clause of 

the Sixth Amendment guarantees a criminal defendant the 

right “to be confronted with the witnesses against” her, 

which includes the right to cross-examine those witnesses. 

See Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400, 404–405 (1965). So when 

two defendants are tried jointly, the pretrial confession of 

one identifying the other as involved in the crime cannot be 

admitted unless the confessing defendant takes the stand. 

That is true, we held in Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 

123 (1968), regardless of whether a judge instructs the jury 

to consider the evidence only against the confessor (John), 

and not against his co-defendant (Mary). Even with that 

kind of instruction, a “substantial risk” exists that the jury 

will impermissibly rely on John's confession when determining Mary's guilt. Id., at 126. 

Suppose, though, that the government redacts the confession to eliminate Mary's name. Mary still sits in the courtroom alongside John. But the version of the confession 

admitted into evidence now includes a blank space where 

Mary's name belongs. And when the interviewing offcer 

reads the confession to the jury, he says “deleted” in place of 

Mary's name. So instead of “Mary and I went out Saturday 

night and robbed Bill,” what the jury hears is “deleted and 

I went out Saturday night and robbed Bill.” 

That confession, too, is inadmissible under our precedent. 

Though the confession no longer identifes Mary by name, 

the implication is obvious: A juror “need only lift his eyes to 

[Mary], sitting at counsel table,” to realize to whom “deleted” 

refers. Gray v. Maryland, 523 U. S. 185, 193 (1998). The 
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redacted confession thus presents the same risk as the unredacted one—that the jury will consider it as evidence against 

Mary even if instructed not to. Because the confessions “so 

closely resemble” each other, we have held, “the law must 

require the same result.” Id., at 192. 

Now consider one last option. The government again 

modifes the confession to avoid the express reference. But 

this time, instead of swapping Mary's name out for “deleted,” 

the government replaces it with the words “a woman.” The 

line read to the jury thus becomes: “A woman and I went 

out Saturday night and robbed Bill.” In the face of precedent that would bar the government from using either of the 

frst two versions of John's confession, a judge must decide 

what to do about this one. Would its admission, too, violate 

Mary's right of confrontation? 

The answer should be obvious. A jury is still going to 

recognize that John is talking about Mary—for who else 

could the mystery “woman” be? This last version of the 

confession thus presents the same risk as the frst two: that 

jurors will rely on John's confession when assessing Mary's 

guilt. Yet in today's decision, the Court draws a line of constitutional signifcance between the frst two examples and 

the third. Confessions that use a defendant's name or a 

symbol of omission—clear Confrontation Clause violation. 

Confessions that replace a defendant's name with another 

placeholder—no Sixth Amendment problem, no matter how 

obvious the reference to the defendant. In so elevating 

form over substance, the majority permits an end-run 

around our precedent and undermines a vital constitutional 

protection for the accused. 

I 

Start with Bruton, the foundation of this Court's precedent on the introduction of confessions at joint trials. The 

government, we held in that case, cannot introduce a confession by a non-testifying defendant that names a co-defendant 

as an accomplice. Admitting the confession against the co-
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defendant would violate her Sixth Amendment right to 

cross-examine witnesses. See 391 U. S., at 126. And an instruction to the jury to disregard the confession when assessing the co-defendant's guilt cannot remove the constitutional problem. That is because of the effect that such a 

“powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statement[ ]” is likely 

to have on a jury. Id., at 135–136. In this context, “the 

risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow [the instruction] 

is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the 

defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the 

jury system cannot be ignored.” Id., at 135. 

The Bruton rule applies even when an accusatory confession does not expressly name the co-defendant. Bruton, we 

have held, bars the use of confessions “that replace[ ] a name 

with an obvious blank space or symbol or word such as `deleted.' ” Gray, 523 U. S., at 189. (So the Bruton rule extends beyond the frst John-and-Mary hypothetical to the 

second.) And similarly, Bruton bars the admission of “confessions that use shortened frst names, nicknames, [and] descriptions as unique as the `red-haired, bearded, one-eyed 

man-with-a-limp.' ” Gray, 523 U. S., at 195; accord, ante, 

at 652. The Court assumed, for example, that at a joint trial 

of four defendants—three Black, one white—Bruton required the exclusion of two of the Black defendants' confessions because they referred to the “white guy” as a participant in the crime. Harrington v. California, 395 U. S. 250, 

252–253 (1969); see Gray, 523 U. S., at 195. Though confessions of that kind do not expressly name a non-confessing 

defendant, they still point directly at him. See id., at 194. 

They thus raise the same constitutional concern—that jurors 

will consider the confession's accusation in evaluating the 

non-confessing defendant's guilt. 

Until today, Bruton's application turned on the effect a 

confession is likely to have on the jury, as a comparison of 

two of our decisions shows. In Richardson v. Marsh, 481 

U. S. 200, 211 (1987), we approved the admission of a confes-
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Kagan, J., dissenting 

sion “redacted to eliminate not only [a co-defendant's] name, 

but any reference to his or her existence.” Despite that 

complete redaction, the confession served to incriminate the 

co-defendant later in the trial, when her own testimony 

placed her in a car ride that the confession described. See 

id., at 206, 208. But we thought that a confession that incriminated only “by connection” with subsequent evidence 

was neither so “vivid” nor so “powerful[ ]” as a confession 

that “incriminat[ed] on its face.” Id., at 208–209. For that 

reason, we thought, the jury was more “likely [to] obey the 

instruction” to disregard the confession as to the co-defendant. Id., at 208. But we held in Gray that the calculus is 

different when a confession “refers directly to the `existence' 

of the nonconfessing defendant,” even though not by name. 

523 U. S., at 192. Such a confession itself points a fnger 

at a co-defendant, so that the jury can “immediately” and 

“vivid[ly]” grasp how it implicates her. Id., at 196. The 

impact is so similar to naming the defendant that “the law 

must require the same result.” Id., at 192. In both situations, the confession's “powerfully incriminating” effect “creates a special, and vital, need for cross-examination”—just 

as if “the codefendant pointed directly to the defendant in 

the courtroom.” Id., at 194. 

Consider against that backdrop the facts of this case. 

Petitioner Adam Samia was tried jointly with two co-defendants—Joseph Hunter and Carl David Stillwell—on charges 

related to a murder committed in the Philippines. According to the prosecution's theory of the case, Paul LeRoux, the 

head of a transnational criminal organization, ordered the 

killing; and Hunter, one of LeRoux's managers, hired Samia 

and Stillwell as hitmen. Before trial, Stillwell confessed to 

federal agents that both he and Samia were present at the 

murder, but told them that Samia was the triggerman. On 

that version of events, Samia shot the victim in a van that 

Stillwell was driving. App. 42–43, 45. At trial, one of the 

agents testifed about Stillwell's confession, replacing Samia's 
662 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Kagan, J., dissenting 

name with placeholders like “somebody else” and “the other 

person.” Id., at 75. So, for example, when the prosecutor 

asked the agent what Stillwell had said about his arrival in 

the Philippines, the agent answered: “He stated that he had 

met somebody else over there.” Ibid. And when asked 

whether Stillwell had recounted the crime, the agent testifed: “Yes. He described a time when the other person he 

was with pulled the trigger on that woman in a van that he 

and Mr. Stillwell was driving.” Id., at 76. 

From the jury's perspective, the identity of the triggerman 

would have been obvious. The jury knew from the start of 

trial that there were just three defendants. It knew based 

on the prosecutor's opening statement that those defendants 

were on trial for offenses related to a death in the Philippines. And it knew the role that each defendant allegedly 

played in the crime: Hunter had hired Stillwell and Samia as 

hitmen, and those two men carried out the murder. In fact, 

the prosecutor began his opening statement with the exact 

sequence of events Stillwell had described in his interview: 

The prosecutor told jurors that Samia “shot [the victim] 

twice in the face” while the victim “was riding in the backseat of a van driven” by Stillwell. Id., at 52. So when the 

federal agent took the stand on day two of the trial, it didn't 

make a lick of difference that he didn't identify the shooter 

by name, but instead used placeholder terms. Any reasonable juror would have realized immediately—and without 

reference to any other evidence—that “the other person” 

who “pulled the trigger” was Samia. 

That fact makes Stillwell's confession inadmissible under 

our Bruton precedent. The agent's testimony about the 

confession pointed a fnger straight at Samia, no less than if 

the agent had used Samia's name or called him “deleted.” 

II 

So how does the majority reach a contrary result? The 

nomenclature it adopts isn't the problem: In describing BruPage Proof Pending Publication
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Kagan, J., dissenting 

ton's scope, the majority distinguishes “between confessions 

that directly implicate a defendant and those that do so indirectly.” Ante, at 648, 652. That distinction roughly tracks 

the one this Court has recognized between confessions that 

themselves incriminate a co-defendant (directly implicate) 

and those that become incriminating only when linked with 

later-introduced evidence (indirectly implicate). See supra, 

at 660–661. But the majority distorts that distinction beyond recognition when applying it to the facts of this case. 

In one blink-and-you-miss-it paragraph of analysis, the majority holds that Stillwell's confession does not “directly” implicate Samia for two reasons. It “was redacted to avoid 

naming Samia.” Ante, at 653. And the redaction was “not 

akin to an obvious blank or the word `deleted.' ” Ibid. 

That analysis altogether fails to capture what our Bruton 

cases care about. This Court has already made clear that 

the frst fact relied on—that Stillwell's confession did not use 

Samia's name—is not dispositive. See supra, at 660. A 

confession redacted with a blank space, after all, also avoids 

naming the defendant; yet Gray held that it falls within Bruton's scope. So today's decision must rest on the second feature of the confession: that the placeholder used (e. g., “the 

other person”) was neither a blank space nor the word “deleted.” But that distinction makes nonsense of the Bruton 

rule. Bruton's application has always turned on a confession's inculpatory impact. See, e. g., Cruz v. New York, 481 

U. S. 186, 193 (1987) (considering “the likelihood that [a limiting] instruction will be disregarded” and “the probability 

that such disregard will have a devastating effect”). And as 

the John-and-Mary examples make clear, a confession that 

swaps in a phrase like “the other person” for a defendant's 

name may incriminate just as powerfully as one that swaps 

in a blank space. See supra, at 657–659. So the majority 

warps our Bruton precedent by categorically putting the two 

on opposite sides of the constitutional line. As the Court remarked in another case about Bruton, “[t]he law cannot comPage Proof Pending Publication
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Kagan, J., dissenting 

mand respect” if we apply such “inexplicable”—and indeed 

unprincipled—line-drawing to a “constitutional imperative.” 

Cruz, 481 U. S., at 193. 

Contrary to the majority's claim, Gray repudiates rather 

than supports the distinction adopted today. In holding that 

Bruton's protections extend beyond confessions with names 

to confessions with blanks, Gray explained that what should 

matter is not a confession's form but its effects. A jury, 

Gray noted, “will often react similarly” to the two kinds of 

confessions; the blank space (rather than name) is “not likely 

[to] fool anyone.” 523 U. S., at 193. Ignoring Gray's forest 

for one tree, the majority points to a passage in which the 

Court described how a confession in the case could have been 

further redacted: Instead of saying “[m]e, deleted, deleted, 

and a few other guys,” the witness could have said “[m]e and 

a few other guys.” Id., at 196. But on Gray's particular 

facts, the latter version was unproblematic. The crime was 

a gang assault involving six perpetrators, while only one 

other person was on trial with the confessing defendant. 

The “[m]e and a few other guys” phrase thus did not point a 

fnger directly at the co-defendant, as “the other person” 

phrase here did at Samia. The more relevant reference discussed in Gray was to the “white guy” in a trial with only 

one white defendant, as described above. Id., at 195; see 

supra, at 660. Gray left no doubt that the confession with 

that phrase should have been excluded—and for the same 

reason as the confession with “deleted.” When a modifed 

confession has an “accusatory” effect “similar” to one with 

names, the Court reasoned, the law “require[s] the same result.” Id., at 192, 194. Gray could not have cared less 

whether the modifcation takes the form of a blank space or 

of a different, but no less accusatory, placeholder. 

The practical concerns the majority cites in support of its 

decision are equally fimsy. On the majority's view, a ruling 

for Samia would require courts to conduct “extensive pretrial hearings” reviewing “the Government's case in its enPage Proof Pending Publication
Cite as: 599 U. S. 635 (2023) 665 

Kagan, J., dissenting 

tirety.” Ante, at 654. But that charge is a strawman—and 

one that Gray already knocked down. See 523 U. S., at 197. 

The Bruton rule—whether applying to confessions with 

names, with blanks, or with other placeholders—demands 

only that a court consider “in advance of trial” such matters 

as the content of the confession, the number of defendants, 

and the prosecution's general theory of the case. Cruz, 481 

U. S., at 193; see Gray, 523 U. S., at 197; cf. Richardson, 

481 U. S., at 209 (noting that a more demanding inquiry 

would be needed if Bruton applied to confessions incriminating only “by connection” with later-introduced evidence). 

Courts have long considered those basic factors when applying Bruton.

1 And the Government has proved unable to 

cite a single case—including in Circuits applying Bruton to 

confessions like Stillwell's—in which doing so created “administrability” issues, much less “fewer joint trials.” Tr. of 

Oral Arg. 93–96.2 In any event, greater “convenience in the 

administration of the law,” as Bruton noted, cannot come 

at the expense “of fundamental principles of constitutional 

liberty.” 391 U. S., at 135. “That price,” we recognized 

then, “is too high.” Ibid. 

With nothing else to support it, the majority reaches for 

two props inconsistent with Bruton itself. One is the “presumption that jurors follow limiting instructions.” Ante, at 

646–647. The majority correctly describes that presumption; it just forgets that the presumption does not apply 

when the evidence at issue is an accusatory co-defendant confession. Bruton could not have been clearer on the point: 

1 See, e. g., United States v. Straker, 800 F. 3d 570, 595–601 (CADC 2015); 

United States v. Hardwick, 544 F. 3d 565, 573 (CA3 2008); United States 

v. Vega Molina, 407 F. 3d 511, 520–521 (CA1 2005); United States v. Williams, 429 F. 3d 767, 773–774 (CA8 2005); United States v. Hernandez, 330 

F. 3d 964, 973–974 (CA7 2003). 2 Seriously, the Government's only proffered complaint when asked to 

expound on administrability issues was with one appellate decision that 

took “six double-column F. 3d pages” to review the trial court's Bruton 

ruling. Tr. of Oral Arg. 96. 

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666 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Kagan, J., dissenting 

“[W]e cannot accept limiting instructions as an adequate 

substitute for [a defendant's] constitutional right of cross-examination.” 391 U. S., at 137; see Gray, 523 U. S., at 192 

(stating that co-defendant confessions are “so prejudicial 

that limiting instructions cannot work”); Richardson, 481 

U. S., at 208 (noting “the overwhelming probability of [jurors'] inability” to follow instructions to disregard co-defendant confessions); see supra, at 659–660. And the majority 

does no better in invoking “historical evidentiary practice.” 

See ante, at 644–646. One point here is Justice Barrett's: 

There just isn't much history helping the majority. See 

ante, at 655–657 (opinion concurring in part and concurring 

in judgment). But assume for a moment to the contrary: 

Suppose with the majority that at some relevant time, courts 

conducting joint trials admitted unredacted co-defendant 

confessions subject only to limiting instructions. Ante, at 

644–646. If that history controlled, Bruton itself would 

have been wrongly decided. The majority's real views thus 

come into focus. The point of its opinion is not to distinguish the confession here from the one in Bruton. The 

point is to say why Bruton should go. 

* * * 

And so one might wonder after reading today's decision 

whether Bruton is the next precedent on this Court's chopping block. The one reason it may not be is that there is 

now no need for formal overruling: Under this decision, 

prosecutors can always circumvent Bruton's protections. 

Consider once more John's confession implicating Mary in a 

robbery—a confession, I'll now add, bearing a striking resemblance to the one in Bruton. See 391 U. S., at 124 (“A 

postal inspector testifed that Evans orally confessed to him 

that Evans and [Bruton] committed the armed robbery”). 

The Bruton rule will still bar the prosecution from using the 

original version of John's confession, expressly naming Mary. 

So too the rule will prevent the prosecution from swapping 
Cite as: 599 U. S. 635 (2023) 667 

Jackson, J., dissenting 

out Mary's name for a blank space or the word “deleted.” 

But no worries—the government now has a functionally 

equivalent placeholder at its (Court-sanctioned) disposal. It 

can simply replace Mary's name with “a woman,” and the 

Bruton issue will go away. But contrary to today's decision, 

the serious Sixth Amendment problem remains. Now, defendants in joint trials will not have the chance to confront 

some of the most damaging witnesses against them. And a 

constitutional right once guaranteeing that opportunity will 

no longer. It will become, in joint trials, a shell of its former 

self. I respectfully dissent. 

Justice Jackson, dissenting. 

I join Justice Kagan’s dissent in full, and agree, in particular, with her insight that the majority's bottom-line view 

is that “Bruton should go.” Ante, at 666. I am writing to 

emphasize that most of the force of the Court's argument (to 

the extent that it is at all forceful) comes from the majority 

having improperly reframed the constitutional standard that 

applies to the admission of incriminating testimonial statements of a codefendant during a joint criminal trial. 

Under the majority's approach, the default rule is that a 

nontestifying codefendant's incriminating confession is admissible, so long as it is accompanied by a limiting instruction. Ante, at 644, 647, 655. Thus, for present purposes, 

the majority repeatedly calls Bruton v. United States, 391 

U. S. 123 (1968), a “ `narrow exception' ” to this default rule. 

Ante, at 647, 650, 652–653. And the thrust of the majority's 

holding is that the so-called Bruton exception is—and must 

be—narrow: Bruton is a pesky deviation that requires the 

exclusion of otherwise admissible evidence (hence, the ease 

with which the majority contemplates dispensing with that 

precedent). 

That approach inverts the constitutional principles that 

govern this case. Under our well-established Sixth Amendment precedents, the Court's analysis must, instead, start 

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668 SAMIA v. UNITED STATES 

Jackson, J., dissenting 

from the premise that the introduction of Stillwell's inculpatory confession during the joint trial threatened Samia's 

Confrontation Clause rights. The introduction of a “testimonial” statement from an unavailable declarant violates the 

Confrontation Clause unless the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Crawford v. Washington, 541 

U. S. 36, 59, 68 (2004). And, here, there is no dispute that 

Stillwell's statement to law enforcement was testimonial, 

that Stillwell was an unavailable declarant, and that Samia 

had no opportunity to cross-examine Stillwell. Therefore, 

the default presumption in this case should have been that 

Stillwell's confession was not admissible at his and Samia's 

joint trial, because the statement implicated Samia on its 

face, and Samia could not cross-examine the declarant.* 

When the Government attempted to nonetheless introduce 

Stillwell's inculpatory confession notwithstanding Samia's inability to cross-examine him, it sought an exception from the 

Confrontation Clause's exclusion mandate. Before today, 

this Court had never held that a limiting instruction, combined with a redaction that merely replaces the defendant's 

name, suffciently “cures” the constitutional problem. In 

Bruton, the Court rejected the idea of an exception entirely—it entertained permitting such an exception in light 

of a limiting instruction given at trial, but the Court ultimately declined to adopt one. 391 U. S., at 137 (“[I]n the 

context of a joint trial we cannot accept limiting instructions 

as an adequate substitute for petitioner's constitutional right 

of cross-examination”). Then, in Gray v. Maryland, 523 

*Contrary to the Government's suggestion (see Brief for United States 

12, 32), a codefendant's confession implicates a defendant's Sixth Amendment rights even if it does “not directly accuse [the defendant] of wrongdoing,” but “rather . . . is inculpatory only when taken together with other 

evidence,” Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U. S. 305, 313 (2009). 

That conclusion follows from the text of the Sixth Amendment, which 

guarantees the right of the accused to “confron[t]” “witnesses against him” 

(emphasis added), not just those witnesses who “ `facially incriminat[e]' ” 

him, contra, ante, at 647–648. 

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Cite as: 599 U. S. 635 (2023) 669 

Jackson, J., dissenting 

U. S. 185 (1998), the Government tried again to get an exception to the Confrontation Clause—this time adding an obvious redaction of the defendant's name in the confession on 

top of the limiting instruction—but this Court once again 

rebuffed such efforts. Id., at 188. Indeed, the only prior 

case in which this Court has permitted an exception to the 

baseline confrontation rule of exclusion was one in which the 

confession at issue arguably was not even “against” the defendant in the frst place, as it did not incriminate the accused in any way until the defendant herself introduced evidence that rendered the confession inculpatory. Richardson 

v. Marsh, 481 U. S. 200, 206, 208, 211 (1987). 

Collectively, our precedents properly recognize the necessary narrowness of any exception to the default Bruton principle that the Government's introduction of an inculpatory 

confession during a joint trial poses a substantial constitutional problem. Not anymore. With today's ruling, the majority fails to acknowledge what is the default rule and what 

is the exception. And it thereby sets the stage for considerable erosion of the Confrontation Clause right that Bruton 

protects. 

Properly understood, the Bruton question actually raises 

two distinct issues: one about whether there is a Confrontation Clause problem in the frst place, and a second about 

potential cures (like redactions and limiting instructions) for 

that constitutional dilemma. The majority skips over the 

frst question today; its analysis essentially assumes that 

there is no Sixth Amendment problem in the frst place, 

which then allows for an unwarranted expansion of what 

should be a narrow exception to the default principle of exclusion. In other words, the Court has now turned our Bruton cases on their head in a manner that risks undermining 

a core Sixth Amendment right. 
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Reporter’s Note 

The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 

and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 

makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 

publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 

for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 

the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 

who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 

argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 

include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 

punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 

None