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Rh not to take into their consideration such parts as affect the other prisoners.” S. Phillipps, Law of Evidence 82 (1816). Another noted that, in English practice, where confessions were not admissible against third persons, “the names of such persons were by most judges ordered to be omitted,” but “by other judges the names were ordered read and the jury instructed not to use the confession against them.” 3 J. Wigmore, Evidence §2100, p. 2841, and n. 5 (1904). “In the United States[,] the latter practice [was] favored.” Id., n. 5.

Considerable authority supports this approach. In Sparf v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 58 (1895), the Court held that, because codefendant declarations “were not, in any view of the case, competent evidence against” another defendant, the trial court should have admitted them as evidence only against their respective declarants. Just one year later, in United States v. Ball, 163 U. S. 662, 672 (1896), a case involving a joint murder trial of three defendants, the Court approved the use of a limiting instruction to restrict the jury’s consideration of one defendant’s incriminatory statements made after the killing had occurred. Citing Sparf, the Court emphasized that the trial judge had “said, in the presence of the jury, that, of course, [the one defendant’s declarations] would be only evidence against him.” 163 U. S., at 672. State practice was in accord, permitting the introduction of nontestifying codefendants’ confessions subject only to a limiting instruction. See, e.g., State v. Workman, 15 S. C. 540, 545 (1881); Jones v. Commonwealth, 72 Va. 836, 839–840 (1878). And, though the Federal Confrontation Clause did not apply to these proceedings, state constitutions contained similar terms. See 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence §1397, pp. 155–158, n. 1 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1974) (noting that virtually every state constitution during the relevant period contained a provision substantially equivalent to the Federal Confrontation Clause).

Notably, none of the early treatises or cases to which the