523 U.S. 185 (1998)
In 1993, Stacey Williams died after a severe beating, prompting Anthony Bell to give a confession to the Baltimore City police in which he stated that he, Kevin Gray, and Jacquin “Tank” Vanlandingham had participated in the beating that resulted in Williams’ death.1 Vanlandingham later died, leading a Maryland grand jury to indict Bell and Gray for murder, after which the State of Maryland tried them jointly.2
The trial judge denied Gray’s motion for a separate trial and permitted the State to introduce Bell’s confession into evidence, but ordered the confession redacted so that the police detective who read it into evidence said the word “deleted” or “deletion” whenever Gray’s name or Vanlandingham’s name appeared.3 Immediately after the police detective read the redacted confession to the jury, the prosecutor asked whether the officer was subsequently able to arrest Mr. Kevin Gray, and the officer responded affirmatively.4 The State also introduced into evidence a written copy of the confession with those two names omitted, leaving in their place blank white spaces separated by commas.5
The State produced other witnesses who said that six persons, including Bell, Gray, and Vanlandingham, participated in the beating.6 Gray testified and denied his participation, while Bell did not testify.7 When instructing the jury, the trial judge specified that the confession was evidence only against Bell, yet the jury convicted both Bell and Gray, prompting Gray to appeal.8
Maryland’s intermediate appellate court accepted Gray’s argument and set aside his conviction, but Maryland’s highest court disagreed and reinstated the conviction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the application of Bruton to such redactions.9
Whether redaction that replaces a defendant’s name with an obvious indication of deletion, such as a blank space, the word “deleted,” or a similar symbol, still falls within Bruton’s protective rule?10
Bruton v. United States holds that the introduction at a joint trial of a nontestifying codefendant’s confession naming and incriminating another defendant violates the Confrontation Clause, even with a limiting instruction, because such powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements create a risk that the jury cannot follow the instruction.11 Richardson v. Marsh limited Bruton to confessions that are incriminating on their face and do not require linkage to other evidence, placing outside its scope those statements redacted to eliminate all reference to the defendant’s existence.12 Redactions that replace a name with an obvious blank space, the word “deleted,” or a similar symbol remain within Bruton’s scope because they function like unredacted statements by directly pointing to the defendant and inviting the jury to speculate about the reference.13
Yes. The rule requires that a redacted confession not refer directly to the defendant’s existence in a manner that a jury can immediately connect to the accused without further linkage evidence.14 In this case Bell’s confession originally named Gray and Vanlandingham as participants in the beating of Stacey Williams.15 The State replaced those names with the word “deleted” or blank spaces separated by commas in both the oral reading and the written exhibit.16
Immediately after the detective finished reading the redacted statement the prosecutor asked whether the officer was subsequently able to arrest Mr. Kevin Gray, and the officer answered affirmatively.17 This sequence made the reference to Gray obvious to the jury from the first moments of the confession’s introduction.18 The redaction therefore resembled the unredacted confession in Bruton rather than the Richardson confession that omitted any indication anyone other than the confessor and a third person participated.19 The trial judge’s limiting instruction could not cure the prejudice, and the jury convicted Gray.20
The redacted confession falls within the class of statements to which Bruton’s protections apply, the admission of the confession violated Gray’s Confrontation Clause rights, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Maryland must be vacated with the case remanded for further proceedings.21
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by The Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, And Justice Thomas
Justice Scalia dissents on the ground that the majority improperly extends Bruton beyond its facial-incrimination line.22 He maintains that the statement “Me, deleted, deleted, and a few other guys” does not facially incriminate Gray because the jury must still infer the identity of the deleted names from other trial evidence.23 Scalia emphasizes that Richardson drew the constitutional boundary at statements that incriminate only by inference and that the normal presumption jurors follow limiting instructions should apply here.24
He warns that the new rule will force prosecutors either to forgo joint trials or to rewrite confessions in ways that distort the speaker’s actual words.25 He would affirm the Maryland Court of Appeals judgment restoring Gray’s conviction.26