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6 (2004). Because Stillwell’s formal, Mirandized confession to authorities, which the Government sought to introduce at trial, is testimonial, it falls within the Clause’s ambit. See id., at 52 (“Statements taken by police officers in the course of interrogations are … testimonial under even a narrow standard”); Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U. S. 305, 329 (2009) (, concurring) (explaining that “the Confrontation Clause is implicated by extrajudicial statements … contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Nonetheless, the Confrontation Clause applies only to witnesses “against the accused.” Crawford, 541 U. S., at 50. And, “[o]rdinarily, a witness whose testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to be a witness ‘against’ a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider that testimony only against a codefendant.” Richardson, 481 U. S., at 206. This general rule is consistent with the text of the Clause, historical practice, and the law’s reliance on limiting instructions in other contexts.

For most of our Nation’s history, longstanding practice allowed a nontestifying codefendant’s confession to be admitted in a joint trial so long as the jury was properly instructed not to consider it against the nonconfessing defendant. While some courts would omit the defendant’s name or substitute a reference to “another person” (or the like), it is unclear whether any courts considered such alterations to be necessary as a categorical matter. In any event, the combination of such alterations and an appropriate limiting instruction was generally sufficient to permit the introduction of such confessions.

One early treatise explained that, when “some part of [a confession] concerns other prisoners who are tried on the same indictment,” “all that can be done is to direct the jury