A co-defendant's confession that implicates the defendant is inadmissible in which setting?

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A co-defendant’s confession that directly implicates the defendant cannot be used in a joint jury trial. This stems from the Bruton rule, which comes from the Confrontation Clause: when one defendant’s out-of-court confession identifies or otherwise implicates a co-defendant who is on trial, the confession is inadmissible against the non-declarant in a joint trial. The risk is that the jury might convict based on that confession’s statement alone, even though the declarant isn’t subject to cross-examination.

Because of this, the confession is typically admissible only if the trials are severed (separate trials for each defendant) or if the redacted content no longer identifies the defendant and does not create a clear linkage to them, sometimes with appropriate limiting instructions. In a joint trial, however, it is not admissible.