The Bruton rule, established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruton v. United States, precludes the admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's confession that implicates another defendant in a joint trial, as it violates the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Pennsylvania has a similar constitutional provision.

This rule is based on the principle that such statements are so powerfully incriminating that a jury is unlikely to follow instructions to consider the confession only against the confessing co-defendant.

Redactions as a Solution

Over time, the rule has been refined. When the situation arises, it is common to just redact the other defendant's name from the statement so as to limit the impact of the testimony against a defendant who did not give a statement or confession.

However, even properly redacted statements may still implicate Bruton if there is a danger that "contextual implication" or "evidentiary linkage" makes it obvious that the unnamed person in the redacted statement is the defendant.

In Gray v. Maryland, the Court disapproved the procedure in which the defendant's name is replaced by the word "delete" or "deletion" because that was the "functional equivalent of naming" the defendant. Instead, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court approved the redaction of a non-testifying co-defendant's confession which replaced any direct reference to the defendant with the words "the other man," when accompanied by an appropriate cautionary charge.

Key Pennsylvania Cases

Commonwealth v. Jones, 2024 Pa. LEXIS 1578 – The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the codefendant's confession violated Bruton's prohibition because it identified the defendant by his likeness in a photograph shown to the jury, and the jury was informed it was hearing a redacted statement.

Commonwealth v. Daniels, 628 Pa. 193 – Redactions using neutral pronouns in co-defendant statements do not obviously identify other co-defendants, thus blunting concerns of incrimination under Bruton.

Commonwealth v. Travers, 564 Pa. 362 – The court upheld the use of redacted confessions and cautionary instructions, stating that redactions removing explicit references to the defendant and proper jury instructions sufficed to meet Bruton requirements.

Commonwealth v. Roney, 622 Pa. 1 – A co-defendant's pretrial confession cannot be admitted against another defendant unless the confessing co-defendant testifies.

Practical Takeaway

If you are a co-defendant charged with another defendant/person, and the prosecutor is intent on doing a trial with all defendants, you need to be wary of statements your co-defendant may have made to police implicating your involvement. If that co-defendant is not testifying, you need a lawyer versed in criminal practice to object or make a motion to limit the statement.