Bruton: Still A Constitutional Safeguard
Or Effectively Overruled? It Depends On Who You Ask.
By: Gabriella Pinzon
First, a big
thanks to David Oscar Markus and John R. Byrne for the opportunity to submit
this guest post. This post will cover the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Samiav. United States, the Court’s latest decision regarding the Confrontation
Clause and nonconfessing codefendants. This issue, along with the one addressed
in an earlier post by my teammate,
Brandon Shinder, was the subject of the 2023 Gibbons Criminal Procedure Moot
Court Competition, where Brandon and I represented the University of Miami
School of Law in winning 1st place and contributed to a national ranking of No.
3 for UM Law’s Moot Court Board. I would also like to thank our coaches, Adam
Stolz and Luis Reyes, for their guidance and support throughout the
competition. We couldn’t have done it without them.
(L to R) Gaby Pinzon, Adam Stolz (coach), Brandon Shinder; not pictured: Luis Reyes (coach).
In Bruton v. United
States,
the Supreme Court “recognized a narrow exception to” the bedrock presumption
that juries follow instructions. It held that the Confrontation Clause of the
Sixth Amendment is violated “when the facially incriminating confession of a
nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial,” even with a
limiting instruction. Following Bruton, prosecutors began redacting
confessions in joint trials when the confession named a nonconfessing
defendant. In Richardson v.
Marsh,
the Court upheld the use of a redacted confession that completely removed all
references to the nonconfessing defendant because it did not violate the Confrontation
Clause when introduced with a limiting instruction, despite that the confession
would incriminate the nonconfessing defendant when linked with the other evidence
at trial.
But in Gray v. Maryland, the Court
arguably expanded Bruton’s reach, holding that some redactions, like
replacing the nonconfessing defendant’s name with “deleted,” infer that the
redaction refers to the nonconfessing defendant. The Court explained that such
a confession so closely resembled Bruton’s unredacted statement that the
redaction violates the Confrontation Clause. After Gray, prosecutors
began using a different kind of redaction, replacing a nonconfessing defendant’s
name with a neutral placeholder, like “the other person,” when they needed to
identify that there was an accomplice to the crime or otherwise provide
necessary context.
That brings us to
our most recent case, Samia. The Court
clarified (over dissenting opinions) that these “placeholder” redactions do not
violate the Confrontation Clause when introduced to the jury with limiting
instructions.
The Court first noted
that the use of altered confessions identifying “another person” is supported
by a broader historical understanding that “altering a nontestifying
codefendant’s confession not to name the defendant, coupled with a limiting
instruction, was enough to permit the introduction of such confessions at least
as an evidentiary matter.”
Next, the Court
cited Bruton and its progeny as support for its conclusion, explaining
how “the Court’s precedents distinguish between confessions that directly
implicate a defendant and those that do so indirectly.” Because the confession
did not directly name Samia, and because the confession was not obviously
redacted in a manner resembling the confession in Gray, the confession fell
outside Bruton’s narrow exception to the bedrock presumption that jurors
will follow limiting instructions.
The Court went on
to say that redacting the confession like in Richardson so as not to identify
the existence of the nonconfessing defendant at all would be infeasible given
the nature of the crime: conspiracy. Samia’s coconspirator confessed that he
was driving a car while “the other person” he was with shot the victim. To make
it appear that the coconspirator acted alone by redacting the confession to
eliminate the existence of an accomplice, the Court explained, would not only
prevent the Government from proving an essential element of its case against
the confessing defendant, but would potentially confuse the jury into believing
that it was the confessing defendant, Samia’s coconspirator, who shot the
victim.
Finally, the
majority declined to adopt Samia’s proposed rule that would require trial
courts to “conduct extensive pretrial hearings to determine whether the jury
could infer from the Government’s case in its entirety that the defendant had
been named in an altered confession.” Such an approach, the Court explained, would
be burdensome and “far from foolproof” since it would be impractical to fully
police juror inferences. As an alternative, Samia proposed that the Government “forgo
use of the confession entirely,” to avoid the practical consequence of
severance in which Samia’s rule would result. “But, this ignores the fact that confessions
are ‘essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting, and
punishing those who violate the law.’”
Justice Kagan, joined by Justice
Sotomayor and Justice Jackson, dissented. The dissent argued that Bruton’s
application had always turned on the confession’s inculpatory impact, but that
the majority instead focused on whether Samia was directly named and whether the
confession used obvious indications of redaction, such as the word “deleted,”
thereby “warping” Bruton’s precedent. Because the jury would
obviously know that “the other person” named in the coconspirator’s confession
was Samia, the confession, as admitted, violated the Confrontation Clause in
the dissent’s view:
And so one might
wonder after reading today’s decision whether Bruton is the next
precedent on this Court’s chopping block. The one reason it may not be is that
there is now no need for formal overruling: Under this decision, prosecutors
can always circumvent Bruton’s protections. . . . The Bruton rule will
still bar the prosecution from using the original version of [a codefendant’s]
confession, expressly naming [a nonconfessing defendant]. So too the rule will
prevent the prosecution from swapping out [a nonconfessing defendant’s] name
for a blank space or the word “deleted.” But no worries—the government now has
a functionally equivalent placeholder at its (Court-sanctioned) disposal. It
can simply replace [the nonconfessing defendant’s] name with [a placeholder],
and the Bruton issue will go away. But contrary to today’s decision, the
serious Sixth Amendment problem remains. Now, defendants in joint trials will
not have the chance to confront some of the most damaging witnesses against
them. And a constitutional right once guaranteeing that opportunity will no longer.
It will become, in joint trials, a shell of its former self.
So, does Bruton
still play a role in protecting the rights of the accused? It depends on who
you ask.
