Opinion ID: 220788
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pennsylvania Superior Court's Analysis of Pabon's Bruton Claim

Text: The DA asserts that the state trial court reasonably concluded that Pabon's Bruton claim is plainly meritless. Supp. Br. for Appellees 28. As noted, however, in Vazquez we rejected explicitly the bright-line approach taken by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, under which a substitution of a pronoun for a name is adequate provided no specific name was used and limiting instructions were given. Vazquez, 550 F.3d at 282. That same flawed, bright-line approach was applied in deciding Pabon's direct appeal. This implies that Pabon's Bruton claim was decided under Pennsylvania case law that is an unreasonable application of Federal law. Id. In addition, Judge Greenspan repeatedly emphasized the curative instructions issued at several times during the trial. These instructions, however, are beside the point. The central premise of Bruton is that [l]imiting instructions may not in fact erase the prejudice created by a codefendant's confession. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 132, 88 S.Ct. 1620. Moreover, as Cruz noted, under Bruton it is the likelihood that the instruction will be disregarded, not the quality of the instruction or its repetition, that is relevant in determining whether a Bruton violation has occurred. Cruz, 481 U.S. 186, 107 S.Ct. 1714. The United States Supreme Court has reaffirmed that instructions can exacerbate the problem jurors face in trying to segregate evidence that is admissible as to one codefendant but not another. See Gray, 523 U.S. at 193, 118 S.Ct. 1151. Thus, the Court that decided Pabon's direct appeal should have focused on the degree to which DeJesus's confession implicated Pabon and the extent of any resulting prejudice in the particular circumstances of the trial, rather than the quality or number of jury instructions given.