Page:Samia v. United States.pdf/2

2 be considered as to Samia or Hunter. Samia and his codefendants were convicted on all counts. On appeal, Samia argued that the admission of Stillwell’s confession was constitutional error because other evidence and statements at trial enabled the jury to immediately infer that the “other person” described in the confession was Samia himself. The Second Circuit, pointing to the established practice of replacing a defendant’s name with a neutral noun or pronoun in a nontestifying codefendant’s confession, held that the admission of Stillwell’s confession did not violate Samia’s Confrontation Clause rights.

(2) This historical practice is in accord with the law’s broader assumption that jurors will “ ‘attend closely the particular language of