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8 parties have referred, or that we have discovered, suggests that a confession naming a codefendant must in all cases be edited to refer to “another person” (or something similar) such that the codefendant’s name is not included in the confession. Accordingly, while it is unclear whether alteration of any kind was necessary, historical practice suggests at least that altering a nontestifying codefendant’s confession not to name the defendant, coupled with a limiting instruction, was enough to permit the introduction of such confessions at least as an evidentiary matter.

This historical evidentiary practice is in accord with the law’s broader assumption that jurors can be relied upon to follow the trial judge’s instructions. Evidence at trial is often admitted for a limited purpose, accompanied by a limiting instruction. And, our legal system presumes that jurors will “ ‘attend closely the particular language of [such] instructions in a criminal case and strive to understand, make sense of, and follow’ ” them. United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 740 (1993).

The Court has presumed, for example, that jurors will follow instructions to consider a defendant’s prior conviction only for purposes of a sentence enhancement and not in determining whether he committed the criminal acts charged. Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U. S. 422, 438, and n. 6 (1983). This presumption works in tandem with a defendant’s Fifth Amendment right not to testify against himself, by ensuring that jurors do not draw an adverse inference from his choice not to testify. Lakeside v. Oregon, 435 U. S. 333, 338–341 (1978). It also applies to situations with potentially life-and-death stakes for defendants: A limiting instruction may be used to instruct jurors to consider mitigating evidence for purposes of one defendant and not another at the sentencing stage of a joint capital trial. Kansas v. Carr, 577 U. S. 108, 124–125 (2016).