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12 Williams were convicted. Id., at 205.

In considering the introduction of Williams’ confession, this Court noted that, “[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,” emphasizing the “almost invariable assumption of the law that jurors follow their instructions.” Id., at 206. It then explained that Bruton represented a “narrow exception to this principle.” 481 U. S., at 207. Whereas the confession in Bruton had “ ‘expressly implicated’ the defendant and his accomplice,” the confession in Richardson “was not incriminating on its face, and became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial.” 481 U. S., at 208 (citing Bruton, 391 U. S., at 124, n. 1). The former evidence, the Court explained, is “more vivid” and thus “more difficult to thrust out of mind.” 481 U. S., at 208. Additionally, in the case of inferential incrimination, the Court posited that “the judge’s instruction may well be successful in dissuading the jury from entering onto the path of inference,” leaving “no incrimination to forget.” Ibid.

Gray then confronted a question Richardson expressly left open: whether a confession altered “by substituting for the defendant’s name in the confession a blank space or the word ‘deleted’ ” violated the Confrontation Clause. 523 U. S., at 188; see also Richardson, 481 U. S., at 211, n. 5. In Gray, the Court considered Anthony Bell’s confession to Baltimore police, implicating himself, Kevin Gray, and