Richardson v. Marsh

The rationale of our decision in Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, 135-136 (1968), applies without exception to all *212inadmissible confessions that are “powerfully incriminating.” Today, however, the Court draws a distinction of constitutional magnitude between those confessions that directly identify the defendant and those that rely for their inculpa-tory effect on the factual and legal relationships of their contents to other evidence before the jury. Even if the jury’s indirect inference of the defendant’s guilt based on an inadmissible confession is much more devastating to the…