Grace Nancy - Objection!: how high-priced defense attorneys, celebrity defendants, and a 24/7 media have hijacked our criminal justice system

OBJECTION!

N A N C Y G R A C E

w i t h D I A N E

C L E H A N E

OBJE

CTHOW HIIGH-PRIOCED DEFENSEN!

ATTORNEYS, CELEBRITY

DEFENDANTS, AND A 24/7 MEDIA HAVE HIJACKED OUR

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

N E W

Y O R K

Copyright 2005 Nancy Grace and Diane Clehane All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023-6298.

First eBook Edition: June 2005

ISBN: 1-4013-8267-3

To Keith

C O NTE NTS

OBJECTION!

I NTRO D U CTI O N

I REMEMBER AS IF IT WERE YESTERDAY, SITTING

on the brick steps of my familys home in Georgia that August. It was so still and hot and soundless. Nothing moved. Not a breeze, not the song of a bird, not a single movement to be heard or felt. The heat was so intense it seemed as if I could actually hear it rising up off the dirt in visible waves. Not even a car drove by. The stillness and the heat that summer were oppressive and constant in my ears. I felt like I was being sucked into their vacuum.

A few weeks before, my fianc had been murderedgunned down, as we say in the media. Keith was shot five times in his beautiful face and back. It was only a few months until our wedding, but the gunman couldnt wait. Violence doesnt acknowledge weddings and anniversaries, birthdays and celebrations.

Random violence entered my world.

The world I grew up in didnt know violence or hatred. The chimes in the Methodist churchs steeple literally called everyone home at six oclock with hymns like God Will Take Care of You and His Eye Is on the Sparrow. My only encounters with violence and evil came through fleeting glimpses on the evening news at suppertime. All the horror seemed so far, far away. In my world, there was nothing as far as the eye could see but tall pine trees and soybean fields, peach orchards and rows and rows of corn and cotton, interspersed with pastureland.

I didnt know there was another world, one full of random violence bred from anger and desperation or, simply put, pure meanness. In my life at least, evil was a concept, not a reality. But that all changed in a 2

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single moment. Keiths funeral, the visits from our families and friends, the sympathy cards and the unnatural smell of hothouse flowers I received were all a blur. They still are. Sometimes I cried so much I couldnt open my eyes from the swelling. I was lost. Keiths world had ended, and mine had exploded.

I remember trying to go back to classes. I couldnt. The thought of sitting inside the four walls of a quiet college classroom studying Shakespearean literature, once my joy, was now like a heavy noose around my neck. I knew I could never go back to the world as I knew it.

Wife, mother, and schoolteacher, it was not meant to be.

I escaped the vacuum the only way I could. I did eventually go back to school. To law school. I prayed that I would one day graduate from Mercer Law School and then start the fight. I prepared for years, studying and working late into the night with the lamp on beside my bed, reading.

Sometimes I even carried a lawbook in church. I knew the law would be my sword and my shield. I had to be ready when the time came.

And it did. Seven years after Keiths murder, I tried my first jury trial. At that moment, in that Atlanta courtroom, I took to the fight like a fish to water. In trying to cure the injustice heaped on other victims of violent crime, I was cured. For the next ten years, I fought in the pit

in felony courtrooms in what was then the murder capital of the country, inner-city Atlanta. The drug trade made the city a targeted sweet spot for heroin, cocaine, and pot flooding in and out of Miami. The battle consumed me. I fell asleep at night with my files spread out on my bed. I jumped up even on nonjury days at 5:00 A.M., thinking somehow I was late to court. Every case was a cause I could take up, because every case represented a victim.

Guilty pleas caused me great personal turmoil. How was I to dis-cern if todays shoplifter would become tomorrows armed robber? I quickly gained a reputation for being unreasonable when negotiating pleas and vicious at trial. I didnt care. The battle was all that mattered.

It is of those years that I am the proudest. I made next to nothing, but the reward to my heart and soul was priceless. I had the opportunity O B J E C T I O N !

to be the voice of those who have no voice, most often women, children, and minorities, overlooked and never heard in our system. I learned what they dont teach you in law school, that the Constitution protects the accused, blanketing them and safeguarding their rights. Victims have no voice, no face, and no recourse. The Founding Fathers, with all due respect, did not consider them, and today our courtrooms, our judges, our lawmakers follow suit.

My transition from a courtroom in Atlanta to a New York City television studio was by happenstance. While serving as a special prosecutor in Atlanta, I was called to sit on a panel of legal experts in the Hall of Justice in New York City while still prosecuting in Atlanta. I happened to be seated between two renowned defense attorneysJohnnie Cochran, straight off the O. J. Simpson case, and Roy Black, straight off a victory in the William Kennedy Smith rape case. Naturally we got into a huge fight!

Several months later, the elected district attorney in Atlanta, my boss, decided to retire. I was devastated. Not only had Mr. Slaton given me the chance to become a trial lawyer at a time when very few women in the South were litigating in courtrooms, he was like a grandfather to me.

I didnt know what I would do. I hadnt gone to law school to handle slip-and-falls, argue whiplash car accidents, or haggle over contracts. I wanted justice for crime victims. Nothing else was important to me.

I considered public service with the battered-womens center, but then, the founder of Courtroom Television Network, Steve Brill, flew to Atlanta and asked me face-to-face to join his new experiment, co-anchoring a legal talk show with Johnnie Cochran. I deeply disagreed with the Simpson defense, and with the option of high-priced defense work looming, I wanted to take Cochran on. I took off for New York shortly after Mr. Slaton served out his office. In 1997, I arrived in New York City with two boxes of clothes, a curling iron, and $200 in my savings account. Even now, all these years later, while sitting on a dark set staring into a camera lens, I wonder if I should go back to the courtroom to battle adversaries who trick Lady Justice, taking them on one by one.

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But I accept that just as I was led to the airwaves, I know God will lead me to my next battle, making my path clear. I continue on, grateful.

This is what I know... there is a very real struggle going on in our world todaythe age-old struggle between good and evil. Maybe it sounds simplistic, but it is true nevertheless. We must stand up and fight for what is right, even when we know we could very well lose. I find my sharpest sword to be the truth and I use it whenever I can.

When the sorrow, the frustration, the moments with Keith forever lost surface, my response is to fight. Herein is the truth as I see it. Im on the inside of the struggle for justice, calling out to all who will listen.

This is what I see and what I know, regardless of whether it is politically incorrect or disturbing or tastes bitter going down. The battle of good against evil is real and palpable and is being waged in your local courthouse.