Bruton v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that a defendant's right to confront the witnesses against him is violated when a jury at a joint trial hears his co-defendant's confession implicating him, even if the judge instructs the jury to consider that confession only against the confessor.
The decision overturns a decade-old precedent, Delli Paoli v. United States, and reflects the Court's view that jurors realistically cannot be trusted to wall off such powerful, unreliable evidence in their minds -- reshaping how prosecutors handle confessions in joint trials nationwide.
“We hold that, because of the substantial risk that the jury, despite instructions to the contrary, looked to the incriminating extrajudicial statements in determining petitioner's guilt, admission of Evans' confession in this joint trial violated petitioner's right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment.”
The Court's core holding on why a codefendant's confession violates the right to confront witnesses.
How it got here: A jury convicted both defendants; the Eighth Circuit threw out the co-defendant's conviction but upheld Bruton's, and the Supreme Court agreed to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
George Bruton and a man named Evans were tried together for armed postal robbery. A postal inspector testified that Evans had orally confessed and named Bruton as his accomplice. The trial judge told the jury it could use Evans' confession only against Evans, not against Bruton, because as to Bruton it was hearsay. Both men were convicted.
The question before the Court
When two people are tried together and one confesses to a crime while naming the other as his partner, is it enough for the judge to just tell the jury to ignore that part against the second defendant?
The Court's answer
No -- the Court ruled that a limiting instruction is not enough. When a jury at a joint trial hears a codefendant's confession that names the other defendant as his partner in the crime, the risk that jurors will use that confession against the named defendant is too great, even when the judge tells them not to. Because the confessor does not testify and cannot be cross-examined, the named defendant's constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him is violated.
The Court overruled its own decade-old precedent, Delli Paoli, to reach this result, concluding that intervening decisions and practical experience showed juries realistically cannot wall off such powerful, incriminating evidence in their minds. The remedy going forward is for prosecutors to redact confessions, try defendants separately, or forgo using the confession.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Prosecutors trying co-defendants together can no longer simply rely on a jury instruction when one defendant's confession implicates another. They must now redact confessions to remove references to co-defendants, hold separate trials, or forgo using the confession altogether -- a shift affecting how joint criminal trials are conducted across the federal and state court systems.
What changes now
The case is reversed, meaning Bruton's conviction is undone; the underlying case had already produced an acquittal for Evans on retrial after his own confession was found improperly obtained. Going forward, courts handling joint trials must find ways to avoid putting a non-testifying co-defendant's confession before the jury unless it can be edited to remove any reference to the other defendant, or the defendants must be tried separately. This is a final merits ruling, not a temporary order.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide that all hearsay naming a co-defendant is automatically inadmissible or unconstitutional -- it noted it was not addressing recognized hearsay exceptions (like statements by conspirators) and left open how lower courts should structure joint trials, an issue the dissent said the majority failed to address.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Stewart
Justice Stewart joined the majority in full but wrote separately to stress that even apart from Jackson v. Denno, the Confrontation Clause itself -- independent of that earlier ruling, which he had originally disagreed with -- requires overruling Delli Paoli. He argued that some hearsay is so damaging and unreliable that jurors simply cannot be trusted to discount it no matter the instruction given.
Concurrence — Justice Black
Justice Black agreed only with the outcome, not the majority's reasoning, relying instead on the dissenting opinion he had joined a decade earlier in Delli Paoli v. United States, which had argued that limiting instructions cannot realistically erase the prejudice of a codefendant's confession from jurors' minds.
Dissent — Justice White
“There is nothing in this record to suggest that the jury did not follow the trial judge's instructions.”White's objection that the majority assumed jury unreliability without evidence.
Justice White argued the majority's rule was excessively rigid and unsupported by any new evidence that juries are unreliable at following instructions. He distinguished a defendant's own confession (highly probative, excluded only to protect constitutional values) from a codefendant's confession (inherently unreliable hearsay), arguing juries can readily understand and follow an instruction to disregard the latter. He warned the ruling would severely burden joint trials without the Court explaining how prosecutors should proceed.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court examined its 1965 ruling in Pointer v. Texas, which held that the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause guarantees a defendant the right to cross-examine the witnesses against him, and applied this in Douglas v. Alabama, where a co-defendant's confession was used against a defendant who could not cross-examine him.
- The Court found that Evans' oral confession, unlike the confession-by-reading in Douglas, was actually placed before the jury as real testimony (through the postal inspector), making it even more likely the jury would believe and rely on it against Bruton despite the instruction to disregard it.
- The Court relied on its intervening decision in Jackson v. Denno, which held that juries cannot be trusted to set aside a confession found involuntary once it has been placed before them, and reasoned that the same practical problem applies when a jury hears a codefendant's confession naming another defendant.
- The Court also pointed to a 1966 amendment to Rule 14 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which lets judges review co-defendants' statements before trial to guard against exactly this kind of prejudice, as evidence that limiting instructions alone are widely seen as inadequate.
- Weighing the severity of the harm -- a powerful, unreliable accusation from an accomplice who cannot be cross-examined -- against the ordinary rule that juries can usually follow instructions to ignore stray evidence, the Court concluded that this situation crosses the line where instructions cannot cure the constitutional problem.
- The Court therefore held that admitting Evans' confession in the joint trial violated Bruton's right to confront the witnesses against him under the Confrontation Clause, regardless of the limiting instruction.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Overrules Delli Paoli v. United States (352 U.S. 232)
The Court overturned this ruling that jury instructions could cure the prejudice of a codefendant's confession.
Reaffirms Jackson v. Denno (378 U.S. 368)
The Court relied on this case's rejection of relying on juries to disregard involuntary confessions.