"Trial by Fury" The Presumption of Innocence (Nancy Grace)

[XanaDUer]

The Atlanta defense bar, however, was not so enamored. Defense lawyers accused her of intimidating witnesses and withholding evidence. They also lambasted her for her behavior in the courtroom, which blended the sacred (the Atlanta defense lawyer Jack Martin says Grace would ostentatiously thumb through a Bible while the defense was cross-examining one of her witnesses) with the profane (another Atlanta attorney, Dennis Scheib, complains that she would wear low-cut blouses and provocatively lean over into the jury box). "You needed three lawyers to try a case with Nancy Grace--two to watch her and one to argue the case," says Scheib, who represented a man Grace successfully prosecuted for murder in 1996. Grace vehemently denies all of these charges, dismissing such complaints as "sour grapes" from the very people she repeatedly bested in the courtroom. But, in at least two instances, the Georgia Supreme Court also took issue with her prosecutorial tactics. In 1994, the Court overturned a drug-dealing conviction she had won on the grounds that she improperly inflamed the jury by mentioning in her closing arguments an unrelated triple homicide and a serial rape case. And, in 1997, the Court reversed a murder and arson conviction Grace had secured, chastising her for "an extensive pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct," including her decision to allow a CNN camera crew to film her inside the defendant's house, to which she had gained entry through a search warrant...

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=mM6WW%2FF7VMCLk%2BmZugS8QB%3D%3D

[Midlodemocrat]

1. I can't stand this woman.

She is an Ann Coulter wannabe. She sickens me.

[KharmaTrain]

2. This wench gives me the creeps

What people see in this iritating bunch of cells is beyond me. I can't flip the channel changer fast enough when she comes in. It reminds me of a lawyer who said that the best lawyers end up as defenders...the worst either as judges or TV analysts. A good defense attorney can bag 5 times the money of a Grace and I'll bet that burns her southern booty as well.

She's part of this breed that presses a snap judgement on a trial and through her biased viewpoint skews the coverage. But I can see how she appeals to the "I've been done wrong crowd"...a large number of divorced (a large portion women) who see her as some sort of champion over "male scum".

[applegrove]

3. I have not seen her new show. But I understand she is the real thing.

A Crime victim who turned into a prosecutor. They say that if you spend too much time with monsters that you can start to turn into one. I think that is Nancy Grace's problem. She is powerful & exacting and very efficient with her emotions. She is not cold or uninvolved in the cases she discusses..... and she really has been in courts.

I for one would not want to be represented by anyone other than a fighter if my life was on the line. Likewise if I was a victim in a courthouse dealing with a monster. We watch crime on TV all the time and watch it be talked about in very sanitized ways. She brings the emotion into the discussion and we all run around like babies saying "it is too much, it is too much". No - it is what crime is like. Crime is very harsh. Ask a victim of a crime if you do not know.

That being said - I have not read the article or seen her knew show.

[Genki]

7. Yes

I admire her motives~~two weeks before her wedding her finance was murdered and she changed careers to make her life one long revenge. Sometimes she makes me cringe but I truly believe her heart is in the right place. I hope the complaints about her are sour grapes and that her ethics are in the right place as well.

[applegrove]

9. I don't think she changed her life for revenge. I think trauma changes

you and you end up having a different relationship with the whole world. So of course as someone who had been to the ends of the earth emotionally - she would gravitate towards a job that was in that direction.

Most parents of a child who gets killed end up divorced? Trauma does that.

People with great empathy often end up in the helping professions. People who like to superficially score & talk...end up in sales (where there colleagues are all in sales too and so they can commiserate).

Same thing with a lawyer or a prosecutor. There has to be some fight for you to become a lawyer. And you were either born into the job, or born a fighter, or became a fighter as a child (birth order), or became a fighter as an adult. Nancy, it seems, developed her ability to see injustice clearly and want to help after the trauma. She is also very, very empathetic. That could be learned from trauma or quite natural.

[Genki]

11. interviewed on Larry King

Nancy said after finance's death, she changed her major from English, with the intention of becoming a high school English teacher, to law specifically to go into prosecution.

[applegrove]

12. She was changed. It can happen quick or build up over time. Trauma

changes us.

[Genki]

14. Yes

Trauma changed her and her motivations which changed her profession.

[applegrove]

16. A life well lived is the best revenge. And using your 'new found' skills

and changes in a new career is a life well lived.

[Kurovski]

18. I'm not so sure that she ever healed from her trauma.

But I ain't no perfessional er nothin.

[Shadowen]

4. Nancy Grace...

...is a foul smug harridan. She makes my precious brainmeats bleed when I hear her mouth-parts twists logic so that it screams for mercy. (Yes, I was shocked too: Logic screams shrilly enough to induce brain hemorrhaging.)

Her style of prosecution seems to be an inspiration for the http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2715">Something Awful InterWeb School of Debating.

[BuyingThyme]

5. A clown searching for a circus.

The lawyers' answer to professional wrestling.

The fact that CNN uses her so much seems to say something about the direction in which CNN is headed. (As if we didn't know.)

I'd like to see Nancy Grace pitted against Robert Novack in a cage match.

[XanaDUer]

6. Lol!

I'd like to see that, too.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. She is one of the worst I have ever seen in regards to finding someone....

...guilty long before a trial even begins. She is one obnoxious lady.

[applegrove]

10. Wow you guys are so negative. When she is on Larry King it is usually

a love-fest for her.

Strange.

[Kurovski]

19. Grace fairly oozes negativity.

Where is the love?

I avoided her for almost two years, her crazy reaction to the world at large was too sad and painful to watch.

[jdj]

13. Ironically, the other guilty even if proven innocent one, Dominick

Dunne, had a daughter who was brutally murdered by her boyfriend, and it is painfully obvious that it has effected his life and work too. I am all for the justice system, but Grace and Dunne are using something that has nothing to do with law, the media, to convict people in the court of public opinion before they ever go to trial, which is something our founding fathers didn't have to deal with and couldn't have anticipated.

[applegrove]

17. I just read the article finally. Yes - i agree they should learn from past

mistakes. Not jump on the guilty bandwagon before all the facts are known. I am not so sure that as the article states she is guilty of black & white thinking. I mean these are crimes here. This is not a book club. I think you have to believe someone is guilty to be a prosecutor otherwise how could you do your job. Okay she is very emotional and so that translates good on TV. That is why there is court TV - because it is painful.

She just represents some truth about our society in this day & age. If you have been a victim of a crime you can connect to her - as a champion. I can see how many would not.

[Bake]

15. The Queen of Guilty with no proving innocent.

She is so pro-prosecution it is pathetic. To her, there is no such thing as prosecutorial misconduct. The State never overreaches.

ETc. etc.

BULLSHIT. Plain and simple. She's no better than that maggot Abrams. Whatever law school he attended ought to revoke his degree. And hers.

Bake