Defendant says ‘artistic expression’ through rap was unrelated to the crime
By Steve Lash
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BALTIMORE, MD — Maryland’s top court will consider whether a trial judge properly admitted into evidence the violent rap lyrics an accused killer wrote and sang to an associate during a jailhouse telephone call before the trial, at which he was convicted of second-degree murder.
The Court of Appeals this month agreed to hear Lawrence Montague’s appeal of a lower court decision that the lyrics – which included “treat his head like a target/you know he’s dead today” – were validly admitted as essentially a confession to the shooting of George Forrester in an Annapolis parking lot three years ago.
In his successful bid for high court review, Montague stated through counsel that his “artistic expression” through rap was unrelated to the crime charged and that its improper introduction at trial inflamed the jury against him while providing no substantive evidence of wrongdoing.
Montague is being represented on appeal by Ryan J. Travers, an assigned Maryland public defender. Travers is with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Washington.
The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has countered that the lyrics bore a strong connection to the details of the killing and were properly presented to the jury, as the intermediate Court of Special Appeals ruled last year.
The Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in June and is expected to render its decision by Aug. 31. The case is docketed at the high court as Lawrence Irvin Montague v. State of Maryland, No. 75 September Term 2019.
The slaying occurred outside the Woodside Gardens apartment complex shortly after Forrester bought cocaine from Montague with a counterfeit $100 bill.
Upon realizing the bill was fake, Montague followed the departing Forrester and shot him before he returned to his pickup truck, according to trial testimony from Forrester’s cousin Tracy Tasker, who said she had handed him the phony currency and witnessed the shooting.
Assisted by Tasker’s identification of him, Montague was arrested two weeks after the Jan. 16, 2017, slaying and made several telephone calls from the Anne Arundel county detention center. During one call, recorded by law enforcement, Montague sang his self-composed rap song, including the lyrics “Like a pickup truck/But you ain’t getting picked up/You getting picked up by the ambulance.”
An Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury, having heard the rap song and seen physical evidence retrieved from the parking lot, found Montague guilty of murder and firearm offenses. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
The Court of Special Appeals upheld the convictions and sentence last year in a reported 3-0 decision, saying Montague’s lyrics were not simply an artistic expression that sickeningly glorified violence but bore a “strong nexus” to the details of Forrester’s slaying.
“The lyrics admitted here alluded to details of the crime and explained Montague’s motive for the murder,” Judge Christopher B. Kehoe wrote for the intermediate court. “Because of their patent factual connection to the charged murder, these lyrics were far more than evidence of bad character. Instead they were properly viewed by the trial court as direct proof of Montague’s criminal wrongdoing, whose probative value was not substantially outweighed by any danger of unfair prejudice that their admission would entail.”
Montague then sought review by the Court of Appeals.
