Fall from Grace
One other unnecessary phenomenon of the 21st century is the proliferation of lawyers on cable television. (Public relations people on cable, on the other hand, is fine.) Lawyers have become all too willing to dish out opinions to any cable interviewer who asks—whether or not they have any expertise in the specific or general subject matter at issue.
The princess of them all is Nancy Grace.
Grace, a former Georgia prosecutor once described by an appeals court as playing “fast and loose” with the facts, has used that very “attribute” to become a 21st-century TV star.
Grace first came to media attention by using the murder of her college fiancé as a rallying cry to seek truth and justice. It was later revealed that Grace’s “recollections” of the facts of that case were a bit off. Among them, her fiancé was killed by a coworker, not a random stranger as Grace repeated; the coworker had no criminal record and admitted the crime, contrary to how Grace characterized him; and he filed no appeals after conviction, again contrary to Grace’s story.
Grace, a staple on CNN’s rabid HLN (Headline News) has made mincemeat of America’s time-honored “guilty till proven innocent” standard. Grace’s one-woman judge and jury routine has, among other travesties of justice:
Claimed unequivocally that a drifter suspected in the Utah kidnapping of a teenager in 2002 “was guilty.” The drifter died in custody and later was posthumously exonerated, when two other individuals con- fessed to the crime.
Accused members of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team of “gang raping” a stripper. The more it became clear that the young men were innocent, the more she used her bully TV pulpit to persecute them.
Badgered unmercifully the mother of a missing two-year-old. The day the interview was scheduled to air, the woman killed herself. Relatives blamed her death on Grace’s over-the-top interview and sued. Grace settled with the woman’s estate.
Railed against the exoneration of Casey Anthony in 2011 in the death of her young daughter, Caylee. Said Grace of the court’s verdict, “It’s tough . . . when you think about all those days that Tot Mom went about partying as if Caylee had never existed. . . . The devil is dancing tonight.”
Wondered loudly in 2012 whether singer Whitney Houston’s death in a Hollywood bathtub might be the result of foul play, despite the Los Angeles Police Department’s repeated denials.
Not only were Nancy Grace and her employers unrepentant for the verbal damage she had wrought, she—and they and the ratings—reveled and prospered in the notoriety. Grace was even drafted to appear on Law and Order and chosen in 2011 to compete on Dancing with the Stars, where she embarrassingly exposed a telltale nipple in a particularly vigorous quickstep. Grace, typically, was unfazed.*
Questions
1. Have you any objection to Nancy Grace’s opinions in the ongoing legal cases cited here?
2. What were the public relations implications for Grace’s network, HLN, with respect to its outspoken lawyer?