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Rh That analysis altogether fails to capture what our Bruton cases care about. This Court has already made clear that the first fact relied on—that Stillwell’s confession did not use Samia’s name—is not dispositive. See. A confession redacted with a blank space, after all, also avoids naming the defendant; yet Gray held that it falls within Bruton’s scope. So today’s decision must rest on the second feature of the confession: that the placeholder used (e.g., “the other person”) was neither a blank space nor the word “deleted.” But that distinction makes nonsense of the Bruton rule. Bruton’s application has always turned on a confession’s inculpatory impact. See, e.g., Cruz v. New York, 481 U. S. 186, 193 (1987) (considering “the likelihood that [a limiting] instruction will be disregarded” and “the probability that such disregard will have a devastating effect”). And as the John-and-Mary examples make clear, a confession that swaps in a phrase like “the other person” for a defendant’s name may incriminate just as powerfully as one that swaps in a blank space. See. So the majority warps our Bruton precedent by categorically putting the two on opposite sides of the constitutional line. As the Court remarked in another case about Bruton, “[t]he law cannot command respect” if we apply such “inexplicable”—and indeed unprincipled—line-drawing to a “constitutional imperative.” Cruz, 481 U. S., at 193.

Contrary to the majority’s claim, Gray repudiates rather than supports the distinction adopted today. In holding that Bruton’s protections extend beyond confessions with names to confessions with blanks, Gray explained that what should matter is not a confession’s form but its effects. A jury, Gray noted, “will often react similarly” to the two kinds of confessions; the blank space (rather than name) is “not likely [to] fool anyone.” 523 U. S., at 193. Ignoring Gray’s forest for one tree, the majority points to a passage in which the Court described how a confession in the case could have been further redacted: Instead of saying “[m]e,