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4 name with an obvious blank space or symbol or word such as ‘deleted.’ ” Gray, 523 U. S., at 189. (So the Bruton rule extends beyond the first John-and-Mary hypothetical to the second.) And similarly, Bruton bars the admission of “confessions that use shortened first names, nicknames, [and] descriptions as unique as the ‘red-haired, bearded, one-eyed man-with-a-limp.’ ” Gray, 523 U. S., at 195; accord,. The Court assumed, for example, that at a joint trial of four defendants—three Black, one white—Bruton required the exclusion of two of the Black defendants’ confessions because they referred to the “white guy” as a participant in the crime. Harrington v. California, 395 U. S. 250, 252–253 (1969); see Gray, 523 U. S., at 195. Though confessions of that kind do not expressly name a non-confessing defendant, they still point directly at him. See id., at 194. They thus raise the same constitutional concern—that jurors will consider the confession’s accusation in evaluating the non-confessing defendant’s guilt.

Until today, Bruton’s application turned on the effect a confession is likely to have on the jury, as a comparison of two of our decisions shows. In Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U. S. 200, 211 (1987), we approved the admission of a confession “redacted to eliminate not only [a co-defendant’s] name, but any reference to his or her existence.” Despite that complete redaction, the confession served to incriminate the co-defendant later in the trial, when her own testimony placed her in a car ride that the confession described. See id., at 206, 208. But we thought that a confession that incriminated only “by connection” with subsequent evidence was neither so “vivid” nor so “powerful[]” as a confession that “incriminat[ed] on its face.” Id., at 208–209. For that reason, we thought, the jury was more “likely [to] obey the instruction” to disregard the confession as to the co-defendant. Id., at 208. But we held in Gray that the calculus is different when a confession “refers directly to the ‘existence’ of the nonconfessing defendant,” even though not