Dis-Grace-ful

Crazed media jackal Nancy Grace has reached a new low. Long accustomed to feeding on the carrion of personal tragedy in front of a national cable audience, the despicable Grace has now crossed definitively the line between observer/reporter/commentator and vigilante. Last Friday, CNN aired a taped interview with 21-year-old Melinda Duckett, a woman who, in all fairness to Grace I guess, was a suspect in her two-year-old son’s disappearance. Grace, never one to let the formalities of decency hinder her style, stood up on her hind legs and put the screws to Duckett with a typical fist-pounding inquisition about her possible involvement in the disappearance, proclaiming at one point “You’re not telling us where you were for a reason! What is the reason?” This kind of thing is nothing new. Grace, a former Georgia prosecutor, could badger a witness in her sleep. The twist is that after taping the interview, Melinda Duckett went home and shot herself.

In classic cable-news fashion, CNN not only aired the interview anyway, it RAN A TICKER DURING THE INTERVIEW informing fans of the “development” of the suicide. Classy move. The suicide actually seems to have heightened police suspicion about Duckett’s involvement, so through one twisted perspective, Grace was right to nail Duckett to the wall. After all, Grace’s only objective is to “find that little boy,” and whatever casualties happen along the way are just collateral damage. In denying any culpability for the suicide, Grace shrugged off the blame on her show by saying “sometimes the truth hurts.”

Huh? What truth is she talking about? The one at which she unilaterally arrived?

If you take a step back, this is all pretty disturbing. Nancy Grace is a TALK SHOW HOST. She is not acting as part of the judiciary or executive. Yet CNN defends its decision to air the show by citing its primary goal of “bringing attention to the case in hopes of helping find Trenton Duckett.” Again I say: never mind procedure! Never mind the constitutional protections we afford defendants! Actually, Melinda Duckett was not even a defendant yet! But never mind! CNN is on the case! Totally disinterested, I might add. I’m sure their own ratings never entered their consideration.

I could go on about all the things I find wrong with this chain of events, but I’m trying to keep this relatively short (and failing as usual). Many commentators are focusing on the ethics of CNN’s decision to air an interview with a young woman whose suicide may or may not have occurred in part BECAUSE of that interview (but I certainly can’t say it did for sure, and hey, why let tact stand in the way of CNN’s relentless pursuit of justice anyway?) However, I don’t find the news channel’s move particularly surprising.

What concerns me most as a student of the law is that Grace, both a former lawyer and ostensibly a journalist, effectively played the role of prosecutor, judge, and jury (if not executioner) on national television without anything like due process. No procedural checks are in place to ensure a fair trial in the court of public opinion, and I imagine Melinda Duckett walked onto the set that day without fully appreciating that fact. Grace describes her show as a justice-themed interview show, but this kind of justice reeks of lynch-mob mentality. I really have no idea if Duckett was guilty or not, or whether Grace’s inquisition really factored in her suicide, but that doesn’t really matter to me. There are any number of possibilities, and they all turn my stomach. Take for instance, the “best” case scenario: that Duckett was guilty in some way, that she was trying to escape prosecution, but that Nancy Grace pinned her down on live television and force-fed her the guilt she had been dodging, leading to the inevitable crushing weight of conscience that forced her hand to suicide. Should we as a society be comfortable with this? Is this a suitable way for “guilty” parties to be exposed and dispatched?

Or maybe Melinda Duckett was guilty and was going to kill herself anyway, but decided to stop off for a TV appearance beforehand. Are we any more comfortable with that? Never mind the chilling possibility that Duckett, totally blameless and fragile, was pushed over the psychological edge by a frothing-at-the-mouth Grace. In any case, this all rings of both a dystopic, Orwellian future, and a barbaric vein of human history that includes public executions and gladiatorial entertainment. Personally, I find both worth avoiding to any extent we can manage.

You may find that I have overstated things here, but even accepting the news media’s ever-expanding role in our lives and actions, I find this kind of social development alarming. You may believe that events like these are anomalous and exist in a sphere separate from real justice, but I find it difficult to have learned what I have about the painstaking evolution of our system, and then see events like this unfold on national television.