Court Opinion

ID: 9427591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:16.370441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.262815
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
As Mr. Justice Blackmun makes clear, ante, at 77-78, proper analysis of this case requires that we differentiate between (1) a conclusion that there was no error under the rule of Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, and (2) a conclusion that even if constitutional error was committed, the possibility that inadmissible evidence contributed to the conviction is so remote that we may characterize the error as harmless. Because Mr. Justice Blackmun properly rejects the first conclusion, my area of disagreement with him is narrow. In my view, but not in his, the concurrent findings of the District Court and the Court of Appeals that the error here was not harmless1 preclude this Court from reaching a *82different result on this kind of issue. E. g., Berenyi v. Immigration Director, 385 U. S. 630, 635; Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co., 336 U. S. 271, 275. But see opinion of Mr. Justice Blackmun, ante, at 80-81.
My area of disagreement with the plurality opinion is far wider and prompts more extended remarks. The plurality adopts the first conclusion above — that no constitutional error was committed when the confessions of all three respondents were admitted into evidence at their joint trial. Without purporting to modify the Bruton rule precluding the use of a nontestifying codefendant’s extrajudicial admissions against a defendant in a joint trial, the plurality reaches this conclusion by attempting to create a vaguely defined exception for cases in which there is evidence that the defendant has also made inculpatory statements which he does not repudiate at trial.2
If ever adopted by the Court, such an exception would *83seriously undercut the Court’s decision in Bruton by limiting its effect to a small and arbitrarily selected class of cases. Indeed, its adoption would squarely overrule holdings in four decisions of this Court that applied the rule of Bruton.3
*84Evidence that a defendant has made an “extrajudicial admission of guilt” which “stands before the jury unchallenged,” ante, at 74, 73, is not an acceptable reason for depriving him of his constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him.4 In arguing to the contrary, and in striving “to cast the issue” presented “in a ... broader form” than any of the parties felt necessary to dispose of the case, ante, at 72, the plurality necessarily relies on two assumptions. Both are erroneous. First, it assumes that the jury’s ability to disregard a code-fendant’s inadmissible and highly prejudicial confession is invariably increased by the existence of a corroborating statement by the defendant. Second, it assumes that all unchallenged confessions by a defendant are equally reliable. Aside from two quotations from the dissent in Bruton, however, the plurality supports these assumptions with nothing more than the force of its own assertions. But the infinite variability of inculpatory statements (whether made by defendants or codefendants), and of their likely effect on juries, makes those assertions untenable. A hypothetical example is instructive.
Suppose a prosecutor has 10 items of' evidence tending to prove that defendant X and codefendant Y are guilty of assassinating a public figure. The first is the tape of a televised interview with Y describing in detail how he and X planned and executed the crime. Items 2 through 9 involve circumstantial evidence of a past association between X and Y, a shared hostility for the victim, and' an expressed wish for his early demise — evidence that in itself might very well be insufficient to convict X. Item 10 is the testimony of a drinking partner, a former cellmate, or a divorced spouse of X who vaguely recalls X saying that he had been with Y *85at the approximate time of the killing. Neither X nor Y takes the stand.
If Y’s televised confession were placed before the jury-while Y was immunized from cross-examination, it would undoubtedly have the “devastating” effect on X that the Bruton rule was designed to avoid. 391 U. S., at 128. As Mr. Justice Stewart’s characteristically concise explanation of the underlying rationale in that case demonstrates, it would also plainly violate X’s Sixth Amendment right to confront his accuser.5 Nevertheless, under the plurality’s first remarkable assumption, the prejudice to X — and the violation of his constitutional right — would be entirely cured by the subsequent use of evidence of his own ambiguous statement. In my judgment, such dubious corroboration would enhance, rather than reduce, the danger that the jury would rely on Y’s televised confession when evaluating X’s guilt. See United States v. Bozza, 365 F. 2d 206, 215 (CA2 1966) (Friendly, J.), quoted in n. 13, infra. Even if I am wrong, however, there is no reason to conclude that the prosecutor’s reliance on item 10 would obviate the harm flowing from the use of item 1.
The dubiousness of X’s confession in this example — as in any case in which the defendant’s inculpatory statement is *86ambiguous, incomplete, the result of coercive influences, or simply the product of the well-recognized and often untrustworthy “urge to confess” 6 — illustrates the inaccuracy of the plurality’s second crucial .assumption. It is no doubt true that in some cases a defendant’s confession will constitute such convincing evidence of his guilt that the violation of his constitutional rights is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. E. g., Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223; Schneble v. Florida, 405 U. S. 427. But in many cases, it is not so convincing. Moreover, such evidence is not inherently more incriminating or more reliable than other kinds of evidence such as fingerprints, photographs, or eyewitness testimony. Yet, if these types of corroboration are given the same absolute effect that the plurality would accord confessions, the Bruton rule would almost never apply.7
I am also at a loss to understand the relevance of X’s failure to “challenge” his confession at trial. Ante, at 73. For there is nothing he could say or not say about his own alleged confession that would dispel the dramatically damning effect of Y’s. Furthermore, even apart from the general rule that a defendant should not be penalized for exercising one right (in this case the right not to take the stand or to introduce other evidence) by having another taken away (in this case the right to confront one’s accuser), e. g., United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570, it is unclear why X’s failure to repudiate it necessarily enhances the reliability of a self-impeaching “confession” such as the one hypothesized above. Cf. Lakeside v. Oregon, 435 U. S. 333, 343-344 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
*87In. short, I see no logic to commend the proposed exception to the rule of Bruton save, perhaps, a purpose to limit the effect of that rule to the largely irrelevant set of facts in the case that announced it. If relevant at all in the present context, the factors relied on by the plurality support a proposition no one has even remotely advocated in this case— that the corroborated evidence used in this case was so trustworthy that it should have been fully admissible against all of the defendants, and the jury instructed as much. Conceivably, corroborating or other circumstances surrounding otherwise inadmissible hearsay may so enhance its reliability that its admission in evidence is justified in some situations.8 But before allowing such a rule to defeat a defendant’s fundamental right to confront his accusers, this Court surely should insist upon a strong showing not only of the reliability of the hearsay in the particular case but also of the impossibility, or at least difficulty, of making the accusers available for cross-examination.9 And, in most cases the prosecution will be hard pressed to make the latter showing in light of its ability to try the defendant and codefendant separately and to afford each immunity from the use against him of his testimony at the other’s trial. See Kastigar v. United States, 406 U. S. 441.
Absent admissibility of the codefendants’ confessions against respondents, therefore, the controlling question must be whether it is realistic to assume that the jury followed the judge’s instructions to disregard those confessions when it was *88evaluating respondents’ guilt. The plurality would answer this question affirmatively. But in so doing, it would repudiate much that has been said by the Court and by an impressive array of judicial and scholarly authorities who have addressed the issue.
As the plurality sees it, the answer to this question is supplied by the “crucial assumption underlying [the jury] system . . . that juries will follow the instructions given them by the trial judge.” Ante, at 73. This assumption, it is argued, has been applied in “numerous decisions of this Court” regarding codefendants’ confessions. Ante, at 74, and n. 6, citing Opper v. United States, 348 U. S. 84, and Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U. S. 539. But this reasoning was advanced just as forcefully in the case that Bruton overruled— a case, incidentally, that relied on the same “numerous” decisions that the plurality resurrects in favor of its analysis. See Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U. S. 232, 242. What Bruton said in response to this reasoning — despite the plurality’s contrary assertions, see ante, at 70-73—is no less applicable in the present context:
“[Tjhere 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. . . . Such a context is presented here, where the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are deliberately spread before the jury in a joint trial. Not only are the incriminations devastating to the defendant but their credibility is inevitably suspect, a fact recognized when accomplices do take the stand and the jury is instructed to weigh their testimony carefully given the recognized motivation to shift blame onto others. The unreliability of such evidence is intolerably compounded when the alleged ac*89complice, as here, does not testify and cannot be tested by cross-examination. It was against such threats to a fair trial that the Confrontation Clause was directed.” 391 U. S., at 135-136 (citations and footnotes omitted).
Rather than falling back on once numerous but now discredited decisions, I prefer to stand by the observations about this sort of question by jurists like Felix Frankfurter, Learned Hand,10 Wiley Rutledge,11 Robert Jackson,12 and Henry *90Friendly,13 and by scholars like Wigmore and Morgan.14 In my judgment, as I think in theirs, the odds that a jury will obey a command to ignore a codefendant’s confession15— *91whether or not the defendant has himself confessed — are no less stacked against the defendant than was the deck of cards that William Douglas used to Robert Wood’s, and ultimately to his own, downfall in the game of chance arranged by Woppy Gaddy. In contests like this, the risk that one player may be confused with another is not insubstantial.
I respectfully dissent.

 As Judge Edwards noted, writing for the Court of Appeals:
“In evaluating the question of harmless error in this ease, it is important to point out the factors which might affect a jury’s verdict in relation to these three defendants in separate trials where the Bruton rule was observed:
“1) Randolph, Pickens and Hamilton were not involved in the gambling game between Douglas, the Las Vegas gambler, and Robert Wood, the hometown gambler who got cheated.
“2) They were not involved in originating the plan for recouping Robert Wood’s losses.
“3) They were not in the room (and had not been) when Robert Wood killed Douglas.
“4) Indeed, the jury could conclude from the admissible evidence in this case that when Joe Wood pulled out his pistol, the original plan for three ‘unknown’ blacks to rob the all-white poker game was aborted and that petitioners’ subsequent entry into the room did not involve them in the crime of murder.
“Additionally, if we return to consideration of the joint trial, that jury as charged by the state court judge had the responsibility of determining whether or not any of the three confessions testified to by Memphis police was voluntarily given. Assuming that two of the three confessions had *82been removed from jury consciousness by adherence to Bruton, we find it impossible to conclude that the jury finding and ultimate verdict would, ‘beyond reasonable doubt/ have been the same.
"These factors serve to distinguish this case from Harrington v. California, [395 U. S. 250,] and Schneble v. Florida, [405 U. S. 427,] and to convince us that the Bruton errors found by the District Judge cannot (as he also held) be determined to be harmless beyond reasonable doubt.” 575 F. 2d 1178, 1182-1183.

 As Mr. Justice BlacemuN points out, ante, at 78-79, it is unclear whether the plurality restricts its analysis to “interlocking” confessions, opinion of Mr. Justice RehNQUist, ante, at 75 (and, if so, what an “interlock” is), or whether a “broader” exception is established for all confessions. Ante, at 72. Indeed, its opinion does not explain how in-culpatory a statement must be before it qualifies as a “confession,” an “extrajudicial admission of guilt," or a “statement] . . . heaping blame onto [oneself].” Ante, at 73, 74. Moreover, the plurality variously states its test as applicable “when [ever] the incriminated defendant has [once] admitted his own guilt” (i. e., whenever he has not “maintained his innocence from the beginning”), or only when he has once confessed and has left his “admission of guilt . . . before the jury unchallenged” by any evidence of its invalidity. Ante, at 72, 73.

 In Roberts v. Russell, 392 U. S. 293, petitioner and a eodefendant were jointly tried and convicted of armed robbery, to which the eode-fendant had confessed, implicating petitioner. In addition, petitioner’s cousin testified that petitioner made certain inculpatory statements to him concerning the robbery — statements that the State Supreme Court relied upon heavily in upholding the jury finding of petitioner’s guilt. App. to Brief in Opposition, O. T. 1967, No. 920, Misc., pp. 4, 6. That court also held that the redaction of the codefendant’s confession to omit the references to petitioner as well as a cautionary instruction to the jury to consider the confession as evidence against the codefendant alone was sufficient to avoid any problem under the Confrontation Clause. On habeas corpus, the District Court and the Court of Appeals agreed. This Court granted the writ of certiorari and summarily vacated the conviction and remanded for reconsideration in light of Bruton. In so doing, it established both that the Bruton rule applied to the States and that it was retroactive. 392 U. S., at 294-295.
Similarly, in Hopper v. Louisiana, 392 U. S. 658, the Court vacated the convictions of two defendants both of whom had made full confessions that were introduced at their joint trial with the usual cautionary instructions. See 251 La. 77, 104, 203 So. 2d 222, 232-233 (1967). On remand, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that the Bruton errors as to both defendants were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in light of the overwhelming untainted evidence inculpating both, 253 La. 439, 218 So. 2d 551 (1969), and this Court denied certiorari. 396 U. S. 1012.
In two subsequent decisions, the Court held that error had been committed under the rule of Bruton, although it found the error to be harmless. Brown v. United States, 411 U. S. 223, 230-231; Harrington v. California, 395 U. S. 250, 254. In all four of these cases the Court found a Bruton error even though the defendants’ confessions interlocked.
The plurality’s analysis is also inconsistent with almost half of the lower federal and state court opinions relied on in Bruton in support of its reasoning. 391 U. S., at 129, 135, and nn. 4, 8, 9. In 6 of the 14 cases cited there, the defendant as well as the codefendant had confessed. See United States ex rel. Floyd v. Wilkins, 367 F. 2d 990 (CA2 1966); Greenwell v. United States, 119 U. S. App. D. C. 43, 336 F. 2d 962 (1964); Barton v. United States, 263 F. 2d 894 (CA5 1959); United States ex rel. Hill *84v. Deegan, 268 F. Supp. 680 (SDNY 1967); People v. Barbaro, 395 Ill. 264, 69 N. E. 2d 692 (1946); People v. Fisher, 249 N. Y. 419, 432, 164 N. E. 336, 341 (1928) (Lehman, J., dissenting).

 The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him

 “I think it clear that the underlying rationale of the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause precludes reliance upon cautionary instructions when the highly damaging out-of-court statement of a codefendant, who is not subject to cross-examination, is deliberately placed before the jury at a joint trial. A basic premise of the Confrontation Clause, it seems to me, is that certain kinds of hearsay (see, e. g., Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400; Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 415) are at once so damaging, so suspect, and yet so difficult to discount, that jurors cannot be trusted to give such evidence the minimal weight it logically deserves, whatever instructions the trial judge might give. See the Court’s opinion, [391 U. S.,] at 136 n. 12. It is for this very reason that an out-of-court accusation is universally conceded to be constitutionally inadmissible against the accused, rather than admissible for the little it may be worth.” 391 U. S., at 137-138 (Stewart, J., concurring).

 E. g., Foster, Confessions and the Station House Syndrome, 18 DePaul L. Eev. 683 (1969); Sterling, Police Interrogation and the Psychology of Confession, 14 J. Pub. L. 25 (1965). See generally T. Reik, The Compulsion to Confess 267 (1959).

 Indeed, George Bruton was identified at trial as the perpetrator by an eyewitness to the robbery. App. in Bruton v. United States, O. T. 1967, No. 705, p. 70.

 Cf. Fed. Rule Evid. 804 (b) (3) (“A statement tending to expose the declarant to criminal liability and offered to exculpate the accused is not admissible unless corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement”); Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U. S. 284.

 See Berger v. California, 393 U. S. 314; Barber v. Page, 390 U. S. 719; Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400; Motes v. United States, 178 U. S. 458; Rule 804 (b), supra n. 8. See generally Westen, Confrontation and Compulsory Process: A Unified Theory of Evidence for Criminal Cases, 91 Harv. L. Rev. 567, 582-586, and n. 43 (1978).

 In his dissenting opinion in Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U. S. 232, Mr. Justice Frankfurter commented on the recurring difficulties arising in the trial of two or more persons accused of collaborating in a criminal enterprise when incriminating declarations by one or more of the defendants are not admissible against others. He observed:
“The dilemma is usually resolved by admitting such evidence against the declarant but cautioning the jury against its use in determining the guilt of the others. The fact of the matter is that too often such admonition against misuse is intrinsically ineffective in that the effect of such a nonadmissible declaration cannot be wiped from the brains of the jurors. The admonition therefore becomes a futile collocation of words and fails of its purpose as a legal protection to defendants against whom such a declaration should not tell. While enforcing the rule of admitting the declaration solely against a declarant and admonishing the jury not to consider it against other defendants, Judge Learned Hand, in a series of cases, has recognized the psychological feat that this solution of the dilemma demands of juries. He thus stated the problem:
“ 'In effect, however, the rule probably furthers, rather than impedes, the search for truth, and this perhaps excuses the device which satisfies form while it violates substance; that is, the recommendation to the jury of a mental gymnastic which is beyond, not only their powers, but anybody else’s.’ Nash v. United States, 54 F. 2d 1006, 1007.
“. . . The Government should not have the windfall of having the jury be influenced by evidence against a defendant which, as a matter of law, they should not consider but which they cannot put out of their minds.” Id., at 247-248.

 Writing for the Court in Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U. S. 539, 559-560, Mr. Justice Rutledge said:
“The grave danger in this case, if any, arose not from the trial court’s rulings upon admissibility or from its instructions to the jury. As we have said, these were as adequate as might reasonably be required in a *90joint trial. The danger rested rather in the risk that the jury, in disregard of the court’s direction, would transfer, consciously or unconsciously, the effect of the excluded admissions from the case as made against Goldsmith and Weiss across the barrier of the exclusion to the other three defendants.
“That danger was real. It is one likely to arise in any conspiracy trial and more likely to occur as the number of persons charged together increases. Perhaps even at best the safeguards provided by clear rulings on admissibility, limitations of the bearing of evidence as against particular individuals, and adequate instructions, are insufficient to ward off the danger entirely. It is therefore extremely important that those safeguards be made as impregnable as possible.”

 Referring to the passage quoted from Blumenthal in the preceding footnote, Mr. Justice Jackson made his frequently quoted observation: “The naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury, cf. Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U. S. 539, 559, all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction.” Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U. S. 440, 453 (concurring opinion).

 “Not even appellate judges can be expected to be so naive as really to believe that all twelve jurors succeeded in performing what Judge L. Hand aptly called 'a mental gymnastic which is beyond, not only their powers, but anybody’s else.’ Nash v. United States, 54 F. 2d 1006, 1007 (2 Cir. 1932). It is impossible realistically to suppose that when the twelve good men and women had [the codefendant’s] confession in the privacy of the jury room, not one yielded to the nigh irresistible temptation to fill in the blanks [caused by the redaction of the defendants’ names] with the keys [the other evidence] provided and [to] ask himself the intelligent question to what extent Jones’ statement supported [that evidence], or that if anyone did yield, his colleagues effectively persuaded him to dismiss the answers from his mind.” United States v. Bozza, 365 F. 2d 206, 215.

 See 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 2272, p. 416 (3d ed. 1940); E. Morgan, Some Problems of Proof Under the Anglo-American System of Litigation 105 (1956).

 Indeed, the judge’s command to ignore the confession may well assure that any juror who happened to miss the connection to the defendant at first will nonetheless have made it by the time he enters the jury room. Lakeside v. Oregon, 435 U. S. 333, 345 (Stevens, J., dissenting).