Her name rhymes with “waste of space”

Over the last several months of cable TV channel surfing, I have noticed of a sneering blonde rhymes-with-witch with a voice like a blade sawing tile who’s always ranting at or about something with a mind that’s obviously made up already. And permanently flaring nostrils, like a caricature of a charging bull. She’s allegedly a legal commentator. I learned that her name is Nancy Grace - which is ironic because there is not an ounce of grace in the woman’s teevee performances.

Oooh, I love this, from Professor Bainbridge:

I think Nancy Grace is a murderous little minx who believes in guilty until proven innocent and most of the time thinks a verdict of innocence is caused by juror stupidity. When was the last time anybody heard her say anything that wasn’t relentlessly pro-prosecution?

He blogged that last year. Now we learn - thanks to Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com - that Ms. Grace has been offering a story of her past as a crime victim and prosecutor which is a mix of facts and spin. The facts are explored in a March 6, 2006, New York Observer article by Rebecca Dana.

Nancy sez:

• Back in 1979, when she was sweet 19, her fiance was murdered by a 24 year old stranger, a thug with a criminal record, who denied the crime when arrested.
• When the prosecutor asked her if he should seek the death penalty against the defendant, she said “no” so the defendant got life in prison after the jury deliberated for three whole days because the defense lawyers tried to pull off some complicated BS.
• And oh yes she herself testified and it was all dramatic.
• And she was just tortured by the fact that the appeals went on for years and years.
• So she went to law school and became a star crime-fighting invincible prosecutor with a blazing record of winning verdicts.

The Observer article sez:

• Yes, her fiance was killed, in 1980, by a 19 year old mildly retarded man with no rap sheet, who knew him from his summer job. The engagement was the happy couple’s secret, shared with no one but the fiance’s sister. The defendant was arrested and confessed, there was also an eyewitness who ID’d the defendant at the scene a minute after the shooting.
• The prosecutor doesn’t remember Ms. Grace specifically but did talk to the victim’s family. The prosecutor did ask for the death penalty; the defense didn’t have much to work with but did defend against the death penalty well enough with testimony that the defendant was mildly retarded. No fancy trick defenses were offered. The jury deliberated for a few hours, not three days.
• The prosecutor doesn’t remember her testimony but thinks Ms. Grace may have identified the victim’s wallet.
• The defendant, who’s been incarcerated since his arrest, did not appeal his conviction, although he filed an unsuccessful habeas corpus action a few years ago.
• Ms. Grace’s record as a prosecutor includes cases wherein appeals courts reprimanded her - and in one instance reversed a conviction- for her prosecutorial misconduct. (Such public reprimands are rare, and reversals for prosecutorial misconduct are so unusual that one is noteworthy.)

Even if she’s not a total liar, in my opinion she’s a vicious sneering egomaniacal waste of space and if she said it was raining I would look out a window to check. The Worst of Southern Womanhood personified.

If you get stuck at an airport gate or somewhere running a CNN feed on the TV and you have to watch her, at least those flaring nostrils are fascinating to watch in a horrible sort of way. I wonder if any wasps or moths have flown up into her nose through them.

For a long, thorough and thoughtful analysis of Ms. Grace’s spewings on air and in print, see this entry in the Printculture blog.