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Rh The answer should be obvious. A jury is still going to recognize that John is talking about Mary—for who else could the mystery “woman” be? This last version of the confession thus presents the same risk as the first two: that jurors will rely on John’s confession when assessing Mary’s guilt. Yet in today’s decision, the Court draws a line of constitutional significance between the first two examples and the third. Confessions that use a defendant’s name or a symbol of omission—clear Confrontation Clause violation. Confessions that replace a defendant’s name with another placeholder—no Sixth Amendment problem, no matter how obvious the reference to the defendant. In so elevating form over substance, the majority permits an end-run around our precedent and undermines a vital constitutional protection for the accused.

Start with Bruton, the foundation of this Court’s precedent on the introduction of confessions at joint trials. The government, we held in that case, cannot introduce a confession by a non-testifying defendant that names a co-defendant as an accomplice. Admitting the confession against the co-defendant would violate her Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine witnesses. See 391 U. S., at 126. And an instruction to the jury to disregard the confession when assessing the co-defendant’s guilt cannot remove the constitutional problem. That is because of the effect that such a “powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statement[]” is likely to have on a jury. Id., at 135–136. In this context, “the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow [the instruction] is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored.” Id., at 135.

The Bruton rule applies even when an accusatory confession does not expressly name the co-defendant. Bruton, we have held, bars the use of confessions “that replace[] a