Page:Samia v. United States.pdf/29

Rh by name. 523 U. S., at 192. Such a confession itself points a finger at a co-defendant, so that the jury can “immediately” and “vivid[ly]” grasp how it implicates her. Id., at 196. The impact is so similar to naming the defendant that “the law must require the same result.” Id., at 192. In both situations, the confession’s “powerfully incriminating” effect “creates a special, and vital, need for cross-examination”—just as if “the codefendant pointed directly to the defendant in the courtroom.” Id., at 194.

Consider against that backdrop the facts of this case. Petitioner Adam Samia was tried jointly with two co-defendants—Joseph Hunter and Carl David Stillwell—on charges related to a murder committed in the Philippines. According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Paul LeRoux, the head of a transnational criminal organization, ordered the killing; and Hunter, one of LeRoux’s managers, hired Samia and Stillwell as hitmen. Before trial, Stillwell confessed to federal agents that both he and Samia were present at the murder, but told them that Samia was the triggerman. On that version of events, Samia shot the victim in a van that Stillwell was driving. App. 42–43, 45. At trial, one of the agents testified about Stillwell’s confession, replacing Samia’s name with placeholders like “somebody else” and “the other person.” Id., at 75. So, for example, when the prosecutor asked the agent what Stillwell had said about his arrival in the Philippines, the agent answered: “He stated that he had met somebody else over there.” Ibid. And when asked whether Stillwell had recounted the crime, the agent testified: “Yes. He described a time when the other person he was with pulled the trigger on that woman in a van that he and Mr. Stillwell was driving.” Id., at 76.

From the jury’s perspective, the identity of the triggerman would have been obvious. The jury knew from the start of trial that there were just three defendants. It knew based on the prosecutor’s opening statement that those defendants were on trial for offenses related to a death in the