Cite as: 506 U. S. 534 (1993)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
mutually antagonistic defenses.2 And in any event, the jury in this case obviously did not believe Soto and Zafiro, as it convicted both of them. Accordingly, there is no basis, in law or fact, for concluding that the testimony of Soto and Zafiro prejudiced their codefendants.
There is even less merit to the suggestion that Soto or Zafiro was prejudiced by the denial of their severance motions. Neither Garcia nor Martinez testified at all, of course, and the District Court explicitly cautioned the jury that the arguments made by their attorneys were not to be considered as evidence. Ante, at 541. Moreover, the assertion by his counsel that Garcia did not know the contents of the box is not inconsistent with Soto's ignorance or innocence; nor is the similar assertion by counsel for Martinez inconsistent with Zafiro's possible innocence. In my opinion, the District Court correctly determined that the defenses presented in this case were not "mutually antagonistic." See App. 88-89.
I would save for another day evaluation of the prejudice that may arise when the evidence or testimony offered by one defendant is truly irreconcilable with the innocence of a codefendant. Because the facts here do not present the issue squarely, I hesitate in this case to develop a rule that would govern the very different situation faced in cases like People v. Braune, 363 Ill. 551, 557, 2 N. E. 2d 839, 842 (1936), in which mutually exclusive defenses transform a trial into "more of a contest between the defendants than between the people and the defendants." Under such circumstances, joinder may well be highly prejudicial, particularly when the prosecutor's own case in chief is marginal and the decisive evidence of guilt is left to be provided by a codefendant.
The burden of overcoming any individual defendant's presumption of innocence, by proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, rests solely on the shoulders of the prosecutor. Join-der is problematic in cases involving mutually antagonistic
2 Cf. Kinkade, 140 Ariz., at 93, 680 P. 2d, at 803 (distinguishing "competing" from mutually antagonistic defenses).
543
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