Greene v. Fisher, 565 U.S. ___ (2011)

Eric Greene and four co-conspirators robbed a grocery store in North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  During the robbery, one of the men shot and killed the store's owner.  The five were apprehended, and two of them confessed to taking part in the robbery.  Greene did not confess, but he was implicated by the others' statements.

When the Commonwealth sought to try all of the co-conspirators jointly, Greene sought severance, arguing, inter alia, that the confessions of his nontestifying co-defendants should not be introduced at his trial.  The trial court denied the motion to sever, but agreed to require redaction of the confessions to elimate proper names.  As redacted, the confessions replaced names with words like "this guy," "someone," and "other guys," or with the word "blank," or simply omitted the names without substitution.

A jury convicted Greene of second-degree murder, robbery, and conspiracy.  The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the conviction, holding that the redaction had cured any problem under Bruton.

Greene filed a petition for allowance of appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, raising the same Bruton claim.  While that petition was pending, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 195 (1998), that "considered as a class, redactions that replace a proper name with an obvious blank, the word 'delete,' a symbol, or similarly notify the jury that a name has been deleted are similar enough to Bruton's unredacted confessions as to warrant the same legal results."  The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania nevertheless denied the petition.

Greene then filed a federal habeas corpus petition.  The District Court concluded that since the Gray decision was not "clearly established Federal law" when the Pennsylvania Superior Court adjudicated Greene's Confrontation Clause claim, that court's decision was not "contrary to" or "an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law."  A divided panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed and, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed as well.