Opinion ID: 2507
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jass's Confrontation Clause Challenge

Text: Jass asserts that the admission of Leight's confession at their joint trial violated her Sixth Amendment right to confrontation as recognized in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476. Jass argues that the substitution of neutral pronouns or words such as another person for her own name in Leight's confessiona practice previously approved by our court, see, e.g., United States v. Williams, 936 F.2d 698, 700 (2d Cir.1991)was inadequate to avoid this violation in light of the Supreme Court's application of Bruton in Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998). We review [a]lleged violations of the Confrontation Clause ... de novo, subject to harmless error analysis. United States v. Vitale, 459 F.3d 190, 195 (2d Cir.2006).

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. U.S. Const. amend. VI. The crux of this right is that the government cannot introduce at trial statements containing accusations against the defendant unless the accuser takes the stand against the defendant and is available for cross examination. Ryan v. Miller, 303 F.3d 231, 247 (2d Cir.2002). Where such accusatory statements are admissible at a trial against some defendants but not others, the law recognizes that a trial court's instruction to a jury to consider the statements only in evaluating the guilt of the defendants against whom they are admissible is generally sufficient to eliminate any Confrontation Clause concern with respect to other defendants. As the Supreme Court explained in Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987), [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. Id. at 206, 107 S.Ct. 1702. The law almost invariabl[y] assum[es] that jurors follow such limiting instructions. Id. (collecting cases). [4] Nevertheless, in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476, the Supreme Court identified an exception to this assumption. It determined that in joint trials, where a non-testifying defendant's confession specifically inculpates a co-defendant, the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions to limit its consideration of the evidence only as against the declarant 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, 88 S.Ct. 1620. The Court held that, where the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant, who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are admitted at a joint trial, courts cannot accept limiting instructions as an adequate substitute for [the defendant's] constitutional right of cross-examination. Id. at 135-37, 88 S.Ct. 1620. In Bruton, the Supreme Court acknowledged that some lower courts had sought to minimize the identified concern by requir[ing] deletion of references to codefendants where practicable when admitting a confession solely against a non-testifying defendant declarant. Id. at 134 n. 10, 88 S.Ct. 1620 (collecting cases). It did not, however, express any view as to the adequacy of this procedure to avoid a Confrontation Clause violation. Almost two decades passed before the Supreme Court addressed the redaction issue in 1987 in Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176. There, the Court held that the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when ... the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence. Id. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. It reasoned that the narrow exception Bruton had created did not extend to cases where, through redaction, the confession was no longer incriminating on its face, [but] became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial. Id. at 208, 107 S.Ct. 1702. The Court explained: Where the necessity of such linkage is involved, it is a less valid generalization that the jury will not likely obey the instruction to disregard the evidence. Specific testimony that the defendant helped me commit the crime is more vivid than inferential incrimination, and hence more difficult to thrust out of mind.... [W]ith regard to inferential incrimination the judge's instruction may well be successful in dissuading the jury from entering onto the path of inference in the first place, so that there is no incrimination to forget. In short, while it may not always be simple for the members of a jury to obey the instruction that they disregard an incriminating inference, there does not exist the overwhelming probability of their inability to do so that is the foundation of Bruton 's exception to the general rule. Id. The Court, however, was careful to express no opinion on the admissibility of a confession in which the defendant's name has been replaced with a symbol or neutral pronoun. Id. at 211 n. 5, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Our court nevertheless soon derived from Richardson 's reasoning the conclusion that a redacted statement in which the names of co-defendants are replaced by neutral pronouns, with no indication to the jury that the original statement contained actual names, and where the statement standing alone does not otherwise connect co-defendants to the crimes, may be admitted without violating a co-defendant's Bruton rights. United States v. Tutino, 883 F.2d 1125, 1135 (2d Cir.1989) (approving substitution of neutral words others, other people, and another person for names of co-defendants in confession of non-testifying defendant). Since Tutino, we have reiterated this holding many times. See United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 149 (2d Cir.2003) (upholding redaction of co-defendant's name to my neighbor); United States v. Kyles, 40 F.3d 519, 526 (2d Cir.1994) (upholding redaction of co-defendant's name to he); United States v. Williams, 936 F.2d 698, 701 (2d Cir.1991) (upholding redaction of co-defendant's name to this guy); United States v. Benitez, 920 F.2d 1080, 1087 (2d Cir.1990) (upholding redaction of co-defendant's name to friend). [5]
In 1998, the Supreme Court decided Gray v. Maryland , in which it considered whether Bruton's protective rule applied to the admission at a joint trial of a redacted confession in which the non-declarant defendant's name was replaced with a blank space or the word `deleted.' 523 U.S. at 188, 118 S.Ct. 1151. Concluding that such a clumsy redaction was inadequate to avoid Bruton 's Confrontation Clause concern, the Court explained: Redactions that simply replace a name with ... obvious indications of alteration ... leave statements that, considered as a class, so closely resemble Bruton 's unredacted statements that, in our view, the law must require the same result. Id. at 192, 118 S.Ct. 1151. In distinguishing such unsatisfactory redactions from the type approved in Richardson, the Supreme Court did not draw a bright line between redactions that eliminated any reference to a co-defendant's existence, as in Richardson, and those that did not. Rather, it focused on the inference (or link) that would be necessary for the jury to connect the redacted statement to the co-defendant. See id. at 195-96, 118 S.Ct. 1151. The Court observed that 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. The inferences at issue here [in Gray ] 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 first item introduced at trial. Id. at 196, 118 S.Ct. 1151 (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). While thus concluding that replacing a defendant's name with an obvious blank or deleted reference was insufficient to avoid Bruton error, the Supreme Court indicated that substituting neutral words might well pass constitutional muster. Discussing the unsatisfactory redaction of a statement that named names to Me, deleted, deleted, and a few other guys, the Court asked, Why could the witness not, instead, have said:.... `Me and a few other guys.' Id.
Relying on Gray, Jass contends that substitution of neutral pronouns or the term another person for her own name at various points in Leight's confession was only the most technical redaction and was utterly insufficient ... to eliminate the statement's obvious incrimination of [Jass], or to avoid a Confrontation Clause violation. Appellant Jass's Br. at 45. Jass argues that our pre- Gray case law upholding the substitution of neutral words for a defendant's name in such confessions cannot save the redaction at issue because Gray effectively overruled that precedent and established that any redaction that refers directly to the involvement of one other person, where there is one other defendant on trial, violates Bruton. Id. at 46-47. We are not persuaded.