Opinion ID: 337716
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: DiGilio

Text: 42 DiGilio's Bruton argument is postured somewhat differently from that of his co-defendants. All references to his name were deleted from all of his co-defendants' statements. DiGilio argues, however, that because references to the activities of unnamed co-defendants remained, and in some instances those co-defendants were named, the jury must inevitably have associated his name with the blanks in the redacted statements. 43 The redactions performed here differed qualitatively from the redactions we approved in United States v. Alvarez, supra, and United States v. Lipowitz, supra, where all references to co-defendants were omitted, and even from the redaction in United States v. Panepinto, supra, where all names were deleted. Despite the district court's limiting instruction, the jury might well have drawn the inference that DiGilio was the blank referred to in the Lupo and Szwandrak statements. We cannot approve of the practice of limited redaction in which the redaction exception gradually swallows up the Bruton rule. We find merit to DiGilio's contention that in the particular circumstances of this case a Bruton violation did occur. 44 The government's case against DiGilio consisted primarily of the testimony of Kuczynski, who testified about incriminating conversations that he had directly with DiGilio. Kuczynski was, of course, an accomplice. But his testimony implicating DiGilio was corroborated to a significant extent by the stipulated fact that only records relating to DiGilio were removed from the FBI office. DiGilio called several defense witnesses, but none of them contradicted Kuczynski's testimony. Thus in DiGilio's case, as in those of Lupo and Szwandrak, we find that the error of admitting without cross-examination the co-defendant statements was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Brown v. United States, supra.