Court Opinion

ID: 9471366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:30:37.618939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:22.708724
License: Public Domain

*436DAVID S. PORTER, Senior District Judge,
sitting by designation, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the Court’s holding that petitioner was not denied effective assistance of counsel or prejudiced by the prosecutor’s impeachment of Kenneth Newton, ante at 427 — 429. However, while acutely aware of the high level of scholarship reflected by the majority’s resolution of the confrontation issue, I must dissent from its holding on both significant points of that analysis. First, the Court’s conclusion that the Kemp letters were hearsay because the “inferences they necessarily invite form an integral part” of the documents ignores the fundamental difference between hearsay and circumstantial evidence. Second, even were I to agree that a Bruton analysis was in order here, I would not conclude that such an analysis compels reversal on the facts of this case under existing precedent.
I.
Petitioner and one Kemp were tried together for felony murder and assault with intent to kill.1 While in jail awaiting his preliminary hearing, Kemp wrote letters to two friends, Kenneth Newton and Nelson Calhoun. The letters were smuggled out of the jail where Kemp was being held by Kemp’s sister, Vyethel, who testified at trial and identified the letters.2 The letters clearly sought the assistance of Newton and Calhoun in establishing an alibi for Kemp; they inferentially indicate his “guilty mind,” and that was the prosecution’s purpose in introducing them.
The letters sought to obtain fabrication of testimony; they were thus orders or instructions. As such, the letters did not contain any “express assertion of past fact,” Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 88, 91 S.Ct. 210, 219, 27 L.Ed.2d 213 (1970), susceptible to proof or disproof. Rather, as the majority notes, “[b]elieving the alibi to be false, the prosecution obviously did not seek to introduce the letters in order to demonstrate the truth of the particular statements they contained.” Ante at 432. However, the majority has concluded that the letters are to be characterized as hearsay, even though appearing to concede that they were not offered for the truth of the matters they assert, rather, they have concluded that “the inferences they necessarily invite form an integral part” of the documents. Ante at 432 — 433. Thus, the panel has concluded that the “matter[s] asserted” by the letters included the inferences which the prosecutor wished the jury to draw from them; i.e., the very fact which made them relevant also rendered them hearsay. I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion.
Hearsay is
a, statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.
Rule 801(c), Fed.R.Evid.; Rule 801(c), Mich. R.Evid. Today’s decision drastically alters the meaning of the last clause of the rule. As review of the eases reveals, there has been little doubt in the past that the “mat*437ter asserted” was the matter asserted by the writing or speech, not the matter asserted by the proponent of the evidence.3
In Anderson v. United States, 417 U.S. 211, 94 S.Ct. 2253, 41 L.Ed.2d 21 (1974), the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of an individual who had been charged with stuffing ballot boxes. At a joint trial, the district court admitted evidence that two defendants had perjured themselves at a local inquiry into the elections. Anderson appealed his conviction on the basis that the assertedly hearsay statements of his code-fendants should not have been used at a joint trial because they inferentially inculpated him.
The Court rejected petitioner’s entire argument. Justice Marshall wrote:
The obvious question that arises in the present case, then, is whether the out-of-court statements of Tomblin and Browning were hearsay. We think it plain they were not. Out-of-court statements constitute hearsay only when offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. The election contest testimony of Tomblin and Browning, however, was not admitted into evidence in the [district court] to prove the truth of anything asserted therein. Quite the contrary, the point of the prosecutor’s introducing those statements was simply to prove that the statements were made ....
Id. 417 U.S. at 220, 94 S.Ct. at 2260 (footnotes omitted). I believe that Anderson constitutes an express rejection of the majority’s premise that classification as hearsay may properly be grounded upon the inferences the proponent of the evidence seeks to have drawn.4 The majority has determined that Anderson is not controlling here because the Court refers to “the point of the prosecutor’s introducing” the non-hearsay statements. Ante at 433 n. 11. The majority concludes that this illustrates that it is appropriate to consider the inference sought by the proponent of the evidence when conducting a hearsay analysis. However, the inference sought by the prosecution in Anderson was that the defendants were guilty because the statements were made, there being no other logical explanation for them. It seems to me that Anderson demonstrates that hearsay analysis focuses on just what Rule 801 mandates: whether the statements were offered for their truth. As the Court further noted,
[h]ere, since the prosecution was not contending that anything Tomblin said at the election contest was true, the other defendants had no interest in cross-exam*438ining them so as to put their credibility in issue.
Anderson, 417 U.S. at 220, 94 S.Ct. at 2260 (footnote and citations omitted).
Similarly, Lyle had no interest in cross-examining Kemp to put Kemp’s credibility in issue. Lyle did not need cross-examination to argue that there was no evidence that he had anything to do with the letters, or that he even knew of them. The letters are simply circumstantial evidence of Kemp’s guilty conscience. They were not offered to prove the truth of anything contained in them. Hence I see no ground for distinguishing Anderson.
In United States v. Hackett, 638 F.2d 1179 (9th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1001, 101 S.Ct. 1709, 68 L.Ed.2d 203 (1981)— one of the cases cited by the majority in this case, ante at 432 — the court held that a nontestifying codefendant’s post-arrest exculpatory statements were not hearsay as against either defendant. The court concluded that the false exculpatory statements
were admitted not for their truth, but merely for the fact that the statements were made. Combined with other evidence showing Turner’s statements to be false, the mere fact that Turner made them implied his consciousness of guilt. The agent who recounted Turner’s statements was available for cross-examination on whether Turner in fact made them. Thus, cross-examination of Turner was not necessary to protect Hackett’s confrontation right on the question whether Turner in fact made the statements.
Id. at 1187 (citations omitted; emphasis supplied).
Finally, this Court has recently considered whether or not evidence of an individual’s instructions or requests to another constitutes hearsay, and concluded that it did not. In United States v. Gibson, 675 F.2d 825 (6th Cir.1982), the district court in petitioner’s trial for embezzlement had excluded, as hearsay, testimony that petitioner’s superior had given him an instruction which inferentially explained part of petitioner’s conduct. In ruling that the exclusion was erroneous, this Court held that
[w]e have no doubt that the statement should have been received. First, the hearsay rule bans in-court repetition of extra-judicial utterances only when they are offered to prove the truth or falsity of their contents. This rule does not apply to statements offered to show merely that they were made. [The statement] was not offered to show that the substance of . .. the utterance was true or false. Indeed, a suggestion or an order is not subject to verification because such utterances do not assert facts .... [The excluded testimony] was testimony about a circumstantial utterance ....
Id. at 834 (emphasis supplied).
The Gibson analysis plainly covers this case, and should control our decision today. Kemp’s letters were “suggestions” and thus “not subject to verification at all.” The letters were “circumstantial utterances,” and so were not “offered to prove the truth or falsity of their contents.” The statements in Gibson were simply circumstantial evidence from which the jury could infer petitioner’s innocence. The Kemp letters were also circumstantial evidence from which the jury could have drawn whatever inferences flowed from them, just as would be true of any other piece of circumstantial evidence.
The crux of my difficulty with the panel’s position that the Kemp letters were hearsay is that by blurring the distinction between hearsay and circumstantial evidence, we are not only removing a valuable arrow from the prosecutor’s sling, but, I believe, extending the hearsay rule in a manner which is totally inconsistent with its fundamental purpose.5 Because the letters were not *439hearsay, the state was entitled to their introduction for whatever purpose it wished — including the inferences which the majority finds to have been engrafted to them.6 It is well established that false exculpatory statements may be used as substantive evidence of guilt. See e.g., United States v. Holbert, 578 F.2d 128, 129 (5th Cir.1978) and cases cited therein.7 The rule is a salutary one, since such evidence is just as important with regard to the defendant’s state of mind as evidence of, for example, flight.
In fact, flight to avoid prosecution has from time to time been itself analyzed as a hearsay question. In United States v. Lobo, 516 F.2d 883 (2d Cir.) (per curiam), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 837, 96 S.Ct. 65, 46 L.Ed.2d 56 (1975), the appellant’s codefendant fled during trial, and the trial court permitted the trial to continue. Appellant argued that Bruton was violated by the continuation of the trial. In rejecting his argument, the court noted that
[w]hile a flight, even though nonverbal conduct, has been said to be an assertion (in the form of an admission) of guilt ... it is treated in the Federal Rules of Evidence as a ‘statement’ but because it is an admission as ‘not hearsay’ .... Preferably it is to be viewed as conduct offered as circumstantial evidence rather than for its assertive, testimonial value.
Id. at 884 n. 1 (emphasis supplied).8
I see no substantial difference between flight as circumstantial evidence of guilt *440and Kemp’s letters as circumstantial evidence of guilt. In each case, a defendant committed an act which is reasonably interpreted as consistent with guilty knowledge. The Lobo court’s conclusion that evidence of flight “is to be viewed as conduct offered as circumstantial evidence” is in no way less applicable here because the case at bar concerns a writing.
Thus, in my opinion, today’s decision is one with implications which go well beyond Bruton, and which have nothing whatsoever to do with the confrontation clause. The rule enunciated by the majority is in effect a prohibition of the use of circumstantial evidence of a defendants guilt in a joint trial where that evidence, while squarely implicating only one defendant, arguably . ,, \ „ j , spills over and implicates the codefendant.
jj
My second area of with the majority’s analysis is that I do not believe that, even were Bruton properly applicable to this case,it would compel suppression of the Kemp letters. In order to develop this, I believe it necessary to expand upon the majority’s brief description of Bruton (ante at 431-432)
. , . Bruton and Evans were tried jointly on charges of armed postal robbery. Evans had orally confessed to a postal inspector ,, , , ¿ _ j. i i .,, , that he, Evans, and Bruton had committed the robbery. The postal inspector was permitted to testify as to the confession. The jury was charged that the confession was competent evidence only as against Evans, and could not be considered by them as against Bruton. Both defendants were convicted; Evans’ conviction was reversed because the confession was improperly admitted against him, but Bruton’s conviction was left standing.
The Court reversed Bruton’s conviction, holding that
... Evans’ oral confessions were in fact testified to, and were therefore actually in evidence. That testimony was legitimate evidence against Evans and to that extent was properly before the jury during its deliberations. Even greater, then, was the likelihood that the jury would believe Evans made the statements and that they were true — not just the self-incriminating portions but those implicating petitioner as well. Plainly, the introduction of Evans’ confession added substantial, perhaps even critical weight to the Government’s case in a form not subject to cross-examination, since Evans did not take the stand. Petitioner thus was denied his constitutional right of confrontation.
Bruton, 391 U.S. at 128, 88 S.Ct. 1623. There were three aspects to the Bruton holding, each of which are entitled to consideration in determining whether a case such ^ this falls within its purview.
, „ , . . , , First, of course, the decision rested upon „ ’. , ’ ,, , ,, . , J. the crucial mandate that the confrontation clause be given meaning through the exclu“f.of «f confessions by a nontes^ywg codefendant because of unavoidable and Potentially profound spillover However’the Court made clear that‘te deciSK)n rested on mr°f ,than oneibase' The °Pmion emphasize^] that the hearsay statement inculpating petitioner was clearly inadmissible against him under traditional rules of evidence” (Id. at 128 n. 3, 88 S.Ct. at 1623 n. g) and found that Evans> statement was « erM1 incriminating- to Bruton (Id. 1 oo a ru. * at 135, 88 S.Ct. at 1627).
Finally, the Court noted that
[n]ot only are the incriminations [of the co-defendant] 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 accomplice, as here, does not testify and cannot be tested by cross-examination. It was against such threats to a fair trial that the Confronta-^ion Clause was directed,
Id. at 136, 88 S.Ct. at 1628 (footnotes omitted). Thus, the Bruton holding was based upon the inability to confront one’s accuser; *441the nature of the confession as clear hearsay against Bruton; the “powerfully incriminating” nature of Evans’ confession as against Bruton; and the “inevitably suspect” nature of the confession of an accomplice, who has a clear motive to implicate A ..... . . .. others so as to minimize his own role m the , , crime c arge •
^ . My primary disagreement with the majonty s analysis of this case under Bruton, assuming arguendo that such analysis is proper in the first place, is that I simply do not agree that the Kemp statements are „ j, „ . . powerfully incriminating under any ape , , i, . ,,, , , , proach to the meaning of that phrase used f ..j. txij. by the courts to date. Instead of exam- . . ,, , , , mmg the statements on their face, the x -u , , , xi x Court ta concluded that
[I]ntroduced rato evidence at the ver, end of the government s case — after the close association between the defendants had been firmly established — the [Kemp] , letters were indeed powerfully incriminatino-’extraiudicial statements that‘added ting extrajudicial statements that added substantial, perhaps even critical weight to the Government’s case [against Lyle] [sic] in a form not subject to cross-examination.’ Bruton v. United States, supra, 391 U.S. at 135-36; 127-28, 88 S.Ct. at 1627-28; 1623-24.
, , , „ T . ,, ... ... Ante at 436. I am at odds with this , . . ,, i- x • x x x xi. conclusion. As the district court noted, the , xx x • j x- ’ *ix letters contained no assertion of guilt; rather, they each assert that Kemp was being “framed.” They do not identify Lyle by name; rather, they use a nickname, which in light of other testimony adduced at trial, the jury could associate with Lyle. They in no way indicate that Lyle was involved in the search for fabricated alibi testimony, but simply include Lyle in the scenario regarding which Kemp wished to have his associates testify.9 Lyle v. Koeh-ler, Civil No. 80-74758 (E.D.Michigan, March 18, 1982) (Slip Op. at 8-9).
In short the lett standi al do , , . , • r , .... . ,, not even begin to implicate petitioner m the , ° . , , ,. murders. It is only upon the introduction 0f other evidence — the eyewitness identification, the simultaneous arrest — that the letters arguabl inculpate petitioner. By hold¡ that a Bmtm can occur introduction of a codefendant’s false ,, . , , , . v . exculpatory statements which implicate the .... , . , ,. , , petitioner only mierentially and only upon for introduction of substantial additional evi- . , „ . . ,, .. ., dence, we have gone well beyond the limits ,.. ’ ,, a , , / , _ this and other courts have placed upon Bruton. See United States v. Burke, 700 F.2d 70, 85 (2d Cir.1983). citing United States ex rel. Nelson v. Follette, 430 F.2d 1055 (2d Cir.1970) (Bruton claims dismissed where . . ; xx xi x-i codeíendant s statement does not mdepen- , . .. , „ ,, _r , dently ™Pllcate the appellant); United States v. Greenleaf, 692 F.2d 182, 189 (1st Cir. 1982) (corroboration of government s case ^ codefendant s extrajudicial state™ents does not implicate Bruton); United States v. Kendricks, 623 F.2d 1165, 1167 (6th Cir.1980) (quoting Parker v. Randolph, 442 U.S. 62, 73, 99 S.Ct. 2132, 2139, 60 L.Ed.2d 713 (1979); ‘[t]he Confrontation Clause has never been held to bar the admission into evidence of every relevant extra^dl?al statement made by a nontestify™g declarant simply because;it m some way criminates the defendant ).
I am also at odds with the majority’s failure to take note of the difference between confessions, as involved in Bruton, and Kemp’s letters. As this point really *442goes to the heart of my concern with the classification of these letters as hearsay, I shall not belabor it here. However, I think it clear that, as already noted, an essential part of the holding in Bruton was that the confession of the codefendant
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 accomplice, 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 137, 88 S.Ct. at 1628 (footnotes and citation omitted).10
In United States v. Kendricks, 623 F.2d 1165, 1167 (6th Cir.1980), this Court considered the above-quoted passage from Bru-ton to provide a firm rationale for the admission of coconspirator’s statements, made in the furtherance of the conspiracy, even though no conspiracy had been charged. Id. at 1168 n. 1.
I do not wish to suggest that any cocon-spirator’s exception applies here. See ante at 433 n. 11. However, I believe that the statements here are endowed with the same strong indicia of reliability that the Court noted in Kendricks, and that this factor militates against application of the Bruton rule here, as it did in that case. Here, the letters were not a confession, as is the challenged testimony or document in virtually all Bruton cases; in fact,11 as the district court noted, they begin with the assertion that Kemp was being framed. Lyle, Civil No. 80-74578, Slip. Op. at 8. They were not statements made to officials in hope of advancing Kemp’s own cause, potentially at the expense of petitioner’s, as is intuitively true in the event of a confession. Rather, they were an attempt to conceal the criminal activity altogether — not to minimize it or shift the blame for it. They were, thus, simply not unreliable as indicators of the guilt of either defendant, in light of the other evidence adduced at trial.12
*443III.
Of course, despite the foregoing, reversal would be appropriate had the trial court erred in granting the prosecution’s motion to consolidate petitioner’s and Kemp’s cases for trial. I doubt that my belief that the motion was properly granted will come as a surprise; nonetheless, I briefly consider the point.
As the district court noted, not only was this a case in which both defendants were charged with precisely the same crimes, but “petitioner’s argument that he should have been granted a severance because of his co-defendant’s incriminating statements loses much of its force when it is recognized that those statements were not Bruton violations.” Lyle, Civil No. 80-74578, Slip Op. at 10-11. As I agree with this conclusion, I also agree with the resolution of the issue by the district court.
I suspect that, given the majority’s conviction that no cautionary instruction on the use of the letters would have been sufficient to cure the Bruton violation it has discerned in this case,13 the majority would also conclude that consolidation was, here, an abuse of discretion. However, because I do not perceive the instant case as rising to the level of a Bruton violation, I similarly do not perceive this as a case in which consolidation “was so prejudicial that the [trial] court could have exercised its discretion in only one way.” Hackett, 638 F.2d at 1187. Therefore, I conclude that, based upon my understanding of the law in this area as it was before today’s decision, there was no error in granting the prosecution’s motion to consolidate petitioner’s case with that of Kemp for purposes of trial.
I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

. “Joint trials are favored for the reason of judicial economy,” United States v. Hackett, 638 F.2d 1179, 1187 (9th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1001, 101 S.Ct. 1709, 68 L.Ed.2d 203 (1981), and in this Circuit, “a petitioner must show both an abuse of discretion and prejudice from denial of a severance motion” (or, as in this case, granting of a motion to consolidate) to be entitled to relief by collateral attack. Jenkins v. Bordenkircher, 611 F.2d 162, 168 (6th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 943, 100 S.Ct. 2169, 64 L.Ed.2d 798 (1980). For the reasons discussed infra p. 443, I conclude that joinder was properly granted in this case (an issue not addressed by the majority by virtue of its resolution of the confrontation claim).

. Portions of the letters were redacted prior to their admission, a fact which the majority does not mention. While the record before us does not reflect what portions of the letters were deleted or contain the letters as written, it seems fair to conclude that the trial court was aware of the potential for a Bruton problem, and proceeded in a manner consistent with cases holding that redaction of material which clearly incriminates a codefendant is an appropriate method of “sanitizing” extrajudicial statements. See United States v. Dady, 536 F.2d 675, 678 (6th Cir.1976) (per curiam). However, in light of my conclusion that the letters are not hearsay, redaction was not necessary at all under the confrontation clause.

. The majority appropriately notes that the question whether or not the letters were hearsay is “exceedingly close.” Ante at 432-33. I agree that resolution of the differences between Wigmore and Morgan is difficult. This is shown by the thoughtful exposition of the relative positions of these two eminent scholars in the majority opinion. The result is to remove verbal acts from the realm of nonhearsay in certain instances. The rule governing when such acts should be considered hearsay will be difficult to apply because it is difficult to comprehend. One will have to examine the proffered evidence and determine whether it is an assertion, why it is offered, and whether the reason for which it is offered constitutes an assertion. If this sort of analysis is required as a matter of constitutional law in the implementation of the confrontation clause, then so be it. However, I cannot reconcile this with the rules and decided cases, especially Bruton, where the Court “emphasize[d] that the hearsay statement inculpating petitioner was clearly inadmissible against him under traditional rules of evidence.” 391 U.S. at 128 n. 3, 88 S.Ct. at 1623 n. 3 (citation omitted). Along with the fact that the codefendant’s statement implicating the defendant was inherently untrustworthy, the fact that it was inadmissible under traditional rules of evidence was one of the reasons the Court found as it did.

. Anderson was, of course, a conspiracy case. However, the Court stated that “the prior testimony was ... admissible simply if relevant in some way to prove the conspiracy charged.” Id. at 221, 94 S.Ct. at 2261. I do not read this phrase as enunciating a rule applicable only to conspiracy prosecutions; rather, the Court was, I believe, stating that, where evidence is in fact not hearsay, it is admissible as substantive evidence to prove whatever facts are at issue (given relevance and authenticity, neither of which appear to be disputed here). See also United States v. Hackett, 638 F.2d 1179 (9th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1001, 101 S.Ct. 1709, 68 L.Ed.2d 203 (1981) (concluding that because statements were not hearsay, “it was not necessary that they were in furtherance of the conspiracy in order to be admissible against the other defendants”).

. As the Advisory Committee notes state the point,
If the significance of an offered statement lies solely in the fact that it was made, no issue is raised as to the truth of anything asserted, and the statement is not hearsay .... The effect is to exclude from hearsay the entire category of ‘verbal acts’ ... in which the *439statement itself affects the legal rights of the parties or is a circumstance bearing on conduct affecting their rights.
App. foil. 28 U.S.C., Rule 801 at [| 5 (emphasis supplied). Lyle’s letters are clearly an example of a case in which “the statement itself ... is a circumstance bearing on conduct affecting” the rights of the parties, it being well established that evidence of false exculpatory statements are properly received into evidence for inferential evidence of guilt. See, e.g., ante at 432. Thus, by holding that it is the intention of the party propounding the evidence, instead of the content of the evidence itself, which is determinative in a hearsay analysis, today’s decision sets the clearly stated position of the Advisory Committee on its ear.

. In United States v. Wilson, 532 F.2d 641 (8th Cir.), cert, denied, 429 U.S. 846, 97 S.Ct. 128, 50 L.Ed.2d 117 (1976), notebooks found in an apartment used as a heroin “house” tended to corroborate the prosecution’s version of the defendants’ drug-related activities. In response to defendants’ contention that the notebooks constituted inadmissible hearsay, the court concluded that
“we view the declarations in the notebooks as utterances, used circumstantially, giving rise to the indirect inference that the apartment was the scene of drug sales and related activity. Furthermore, as the government contended at trial ... the existence of the notebooks and the fact of these entries served to corroborate [the testimony of a prosecution witness]. It is the fact that the statements were written, and not the truth of the statements, which was relevant.”
Id. at 646 (emphasis in original; footnotes and citations omitted).
In Wilson, as in the case before us, the statements of one codefendant were circumstantially relevant, and so admissible, as to all defendants, because the statements were not hearsay and were therefore to be evaluated just as any other evidence would be.

. Of course, there is always the possibility that evidence of false exculpatory statements or other circumstances would be too prejudicial to a codefendant to permit the trial to go forward without severance, although no cases so holding have been found. However, the standard which would control such a situation is the same as that which governs severance under other circumstances, and is wholly unrelated to the confrontation clause. Similarly, the trial court could, upon request, consider the matter under Rule 403, Fed.R.Evid. or its state-law equivalent, see Rule 403, Mich.R.Evid., which permit a trial court to exercise its discretion to exclude relevant but overly prejudicial evidence.

. I do not think that the Advisory Committee Note to Rule 801(a), cited by the Second Circuit, is support for the proposition that flight “is treated in the Federal Rules of Evidence as a ‘statement.’ ” The Note states that “nonverbal conduct ... may be offered as evidence that the person acted as he did because of his belief in the existence of the condition sought to be proved,” App. foil. 28 U.S.C., Rule 801(a) —a statement which applies with equal force to flight and to the conduct of Kemp in the case at bar. Judge Weinstein states that “[f]light is almost never intended as an assertion of guilt, but is designed for purposes of escape. Thus it is not a statement under Rule 801(a) and it is not hearsay.” 4 Weinstein’s Evidence U 801(a)[02] n. 13. That statement also fully covers the situation at bar.

. I have particular difficulty with the Court’s conclusion that the inference of Lyle’s guilt was compelled by the fact that the letters put Kemp and “Rock” together at the time of their arrest. It was a fact in evidence that they were arrested together; any attempt at an alibi by either which did not take account of that fact would have been patently specious. Thus, the only inference which I see as necessarily drawn— assuming that the jury concluded that “Rock” ' was petitioner — is what they already knew; that petitioner and Kemp were arrested together. See United States v. Gullett, 713 F.2d 1203 (6th Cir.1983) (references to a codefendant which violated Bruton “must be taken in context [of other evidence] to appreciate their prejudicial value; the case was “clearly distinguishable from cases in which the inadmissible hearsay statements represented the only proof of an essential element of the alleged offense” (at 1213 (citations omitted)); United States v. Dady, 536 F.2d 678 (6th Cir.1976) (per curiam) (no Bruton violation where inferences of guilt are possible only through consideration of evidence extrinsic to redacted confession of code-fendant).

. [T]he particular vice that gave impetus to the confrontation claim was the practice of trying defendants on ‘evidence’ which consisted solely of ex parte affidavits or depositions secured by the examining magistrates, thus denying the defendant the opportunity to challenge his accuser in a face-to-face encounter in front of the trier of fact.
California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 156, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 1934, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970). Thus, the right to confrontation attaches when the defendant might be able to challenge the accuser’s statement at trial. A fortiori, when as in the case of circumstantial evidence, there is no challenge to which the evidence is susceptible, there is no benefit to be derived from examination; thus the purposes of the clause are not advanced. “The test ... is whether ‘under the circumstances, the unavailability of the declar-ant for cross-examination deprived the jury of a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the extra-judicial statement.” Hackett, 638 F.2d at 1186. I am at a loss as to what petitioner could conceivably have accomplished through cross-examination of Kemp. The letters stood on their own, susceptible to neither embellishment nor impeachment. Of course, the defendant will, in the case of such evidence, be able to cross-examine the individual who propounds or authenticates the evidence; here, petitioner was able to cross-examine the woman who ferried the letters from Kemp’s jail cell to his friends.

. As noted above, I believe that the letters were properly admitted as against petitioner, because they were not hearsay. It would be disingenuous to suggest that their admission was harmless error in the event that the Court’s hearsay analysis is in fact correct. However, I believe that even were that analysis accurate, the letters were not “powerfully incriminating” and were otherwise not excluda-ble under Bruton. Rather, I believe that petitioner’s “argument boils down to a claim that [he] would have had a better chance of acquittal in a separate trial at which [the letters] would have been excluded.” United States v. Lord, 565 F.2d 831, 839 (2d Cir.1977). That is, of course, not compelling. Id. Therefore, their admission, even if hearsay, was not a violation of Bruton at all.

. While the majority analysis is couched in terms of Bruton, and so appears to apply only to circumstantial evidence generated after the crime charged (e.g., concealment, flight), I see no significant distinction between such evidence and evidence of a defendant’s behavior prior to the crime which spills over to the codefendant. I can only conclude that under the rule we establish today, the notebooks con*443sidered in Wilson, supra, n. 6, would be inadmissible as against the codefendants absent a conspiracy charge. Thus, the Court is providing prosecutors with an incentive to tack on a conspiracy count in order to gain admission of evidence which would be, under today’s holding, otherwise inadmissible, or to accede to severance in every case where evidence is to be introduced which was generated by only one defendant.

. The majority apparently faults the trial court here for not having given a cautionary jury instruction on the use of the Kemp letters, while noting that “no instructions ... would have forestalled the violation in Lyle’s case.” Ante at 434-435. I note both that counsel for petitioner specifically stated that “we do not request any further instructions nor do we object to any of the instructions as given,” Tr. 1054, and that given the current level of frank awareness with regard to the efficacy of limiting instructions, see Bruton, 391 U.S. at 129-133, 88 S.Ct. at 1624-1626 and accompanying notes, the Court is putting trial courts in the position of having to make a Hobson’s choice with regard to the use of such instructions.