Opinion ID: 2076252
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prosecutor's Comment on Authorship of the Allocution

Text: Hunt read his allocution from a prepared text. The prosecutor commented that Hunt's allocution was written by God knows who. Hunt argues that this constituted an unfair implication that his attorney wrote the allocution. Citing Reidy, Hunt claims that this unfairly prejudiced him. In Reidy, the Court of Special Appeals reversed a conviction where the prosecutor argued that the defendant's claim of self defense was a fiction manufactured by defense counsel. Reidy, 8 Md. App. at 172, 259 A.2d at 68. The court did not err in overruling Hunt's objection to the prosecutor's comment on the prewritten allocution. The comment was ambiguous. In the instant case, unlike Reidy, the prosecutor was not suggesting that Hunt committed perjury and that his counsel suborned perjury. Instead, he was commenting on the use of a prepared script and the fact that Hunt might have had assistance in its preparation. We hold that it was within the trial judge's discretion to allow the comment.