Guest Post by Gabriella Pinzon -- Samia v. United States (2023)

 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.