Motion to Sever, Bruton Redaction Failure (Co-Defendant Statement)

1. 01.

   Richardson v. Marsh (1987) narrowed Bruton to facially incriminating statements, this template briefs the line between redactable and non-redactable.

2. 02.

   Gray v. Maryland (1998) held that obvious deletions (replacing the name with 'deleted') still violate Bruton, a lever courts miss.

3. 03.

   Samia v. United States (2023) — the current controlling SCOTUS Bruton case — is built in, so the motion is drafted around the post-Samia rule instead of being blindsided by it.

• Lead controlling authorityVerbatim quote

  “[D]espite the concededly clear instructions to the jury to disregard Evans' inadmissible hearsay evidence inculpating petitioner, in the context of a joint trial we cannot accept limiting instructions as an adequate substitute for petitioner's constitutional right of cross-examination.”

• Supporting authorityVerbatim quote

  “[T]he Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when, as here, the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence.”

• Supporting authorityVerbatim quote

  “Redactions that simply replace a name with an obvious blank space or a word such as 'deleted' or a symbol or other similarly obvious indications of alteration … leave statements that, considered as a class, so closely resemble Bruton's unredacted statements that, in our view, the law must require the same result.”

• Supporting authorityVerbatim quote

  “[W]here a nontestifying codefendant's confession incriminating the defendant is not directly admissible against the defendant … the Confrontation Clause bars its admission at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed not to consider it against the defendant, and even if the defendant's own confession is admitted against him.”

• Supporting authorityVerbatim quote

  “Where testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.”

• Supporting authorityVerbatim quote

  “The Confrontation Clause was not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession that did not directly inculpate the defendant and was subject to a proper limiting instruction.”

Provenance: every citation above carries a source URL that was fetched and confirmed reachable when the template was authored. A citation without a working source URL does not ship. Counsel of record adapts the motion language to circuit-specific precedent and the facts of the case before filing.