Opinion ID: 2161601
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 34

Heading: Failure to Further Redact Presentence Report

Text: Pursuant to Art. 27, § 413(c)(1)(iv), the State was prepared to offer at the sentencing hearing a presentence report, parts of which were being objected to by Grandison. (We observe that under subsection (iv) of section (c) above, a presentence investigation report, less any recommendation as to sentence, is admissible). Some of the objections were eliminated by agreement, but others were not resolved until brought to the trial judge's attention. It is from the ruling on these objections that Grandison complains. First, Grandison claims that failure to sustain his objection to a detailed account of the State's evidence connecting [him] to narcotics transactions that formed the underlying basis for [his] federal drug convictions was error under Scott v. State, 297 Md. 235, 465 A.2d 1126 (1983). This is so, he argues, because in Scott we said in part that section 413(c)(1)(iii) precludes, in a death penalty case, inflammatory and detailed evidence of the underlying facts and circumstances surrounding unrelated crimes. In our view the objected to facts in the presentence report do not fall into the classification of inflammatory and detailed evidence. In this case the facts underlying the federal drug charges did not reveal much more than the fact of a conviction revealed. The conviction for possession with intent to distribute heroin and cocaine and the recitation of facts showing that such substances were found in a motel room associated with Grandison hardly added anything to the fact of the conviction and certainly were not inflammatory. So far as Grandison's complaint that the presentence report contained an inaccurate assertion that he was on parole at the time the crime was committed, we believe this to be nonprejudicial and under all the circumstances not grounds for reversal.