Cite as: 523 U. S. 185 (1998)
Scalia, J., dissenting
(1986) (citation omitted). We explained in Richardson that forgoing use of codefendant confessions or joint trials was "too high" a price to ensure that juries never disregard their instructions. 481 U. S., at 209-210. The Court minimizes the damage that it does by suggesting that "[a]dditional redaction of a confession that uses a blank space, the word 'delete,' or a symbol . . . normally is possible." In the present case, it asks, why could the police officer not have testified that Bell's answer was "Me and a few other guys"? Ante, at 196. The answer, it seems obvious to me, is because that is not what Bell said. Bell's answer was "Me, Tank, Kevin and a few other guys." Introducing the statement with full disclosure of deletions is one thing; introducing as the complete statement what was in fact only a part is something else. And of course even concealed deletions from the text will often not do the job that the Court demands. For inchoate offenses—conspiracy in particular— redaction to delete all reference to a confederate would often render the confession nonsensical. If the question was "Who agreed to beat Stacey?", and the answer was "Me and Kevin," we might redact the answer to "Me and [deleted]," or perhaps to "Me and somebody else," but surely not to just "Me"—for that would no longer be a confession to the conspiracy charge, but rather the foundation for an insanity defense. To my knowledge we have never before endorsed—and to my strong belief we ought not endorse—the redaction of a statement by some means other than the deletion of certain words, with the fact of the deletion shown.1 The risk to the integrity of our system (not to mention the increase in its complexity) posed by the approval of such
1 The Court is mistaken to suggest that in Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U. S. 200 (1987), we endorsed rewriting confessions as a proper method of redaction. See ante, at 197. There the parties agreed to the method of redaction, App. in Richardson v. Marsh, O. T. 1986, No. 85-1433, pp. 100, 107-108, and we had no occasion to address the propriety of editing confessions without showing the nature of the editing.
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