Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System

by Nancy Grace

  Defense attorneys—but amazingly not Johnnie Cochran—have routinely attacked not only my point of view but also me. That’s okay, though. It’s nothing compared to being accused of using dirty tricks to win a trial or being held in contempt of court. Nothing can sober you up like the thought of being thrown into the county jail overnight while you should be working your case. I remember that while under siege on air.

  If I were to back away from an argument, I would be letting down not only Keith but all victims who go unheard.

  I recall the night in April 2003 when Scott Peterson’s father, Lee Peterson, called in to Larry King Live and lambasted me. He insisted I had a “personal vendetta” and was out to get his son. I was torn between really lacing into him with questions I knew he couldn’t answer about his son and thinking of my own father and how he would fight to the finish to save me. The thoughts of my own father won out, and I held back. Lee Peterson was hurting, too, and I knew that. Of course, it was “great TV,” as several producers said after the show. It wasn’t TV.

  It was real. And it hurt. The next morning, it was replayed on talk shows throughout the day. I didn’t watch.

  When I watch the manipulation of evidence, the endless arguments, and the posturing in a court of law, I can’t pretend I don’t know what is the truth. Trials are not “stories.” They are the pain, the suffering, the raw emotions of victims and defendants, of witnesses—and O B J E C T I O N !

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  many shrink back, either too afraid or too apathetic to speak out. I don’t see it as fodder for conversation. I see it as a battle of right versus wrong. I want the truth to win out.

  Political correctness be damned. On-air or in-court “performances,”

  legalese, arguments for argument’s sake be damned. None of it matters.

  All that matters is the truth and it remains the same, no matter how attorneys twist it and turn it and repackage it. The truth doesn’t change. “See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” while hiding behind the presumption of innocence and political correctness is something I’m not willing to do. It’s not okay, and if people are not willing to take a stand for others, then who will take a stand for them when the time comes?

  It’s hard to swallow, but the truth is not always told in court. Contrary to what some of my critics have said, I don’t believe in “guilty until proven innocent.” I firmly believe in “innocent until proven guilty.”

  That’s the standard I followed in every case I ever tried, and if I am ever judged, that is the standard I pray my jury holds sacred as well.

  But that is not the end of the judge’s charge. An accused is presumed innocent “unless and until that presumption is overcome by evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is the law. If we choose to ignore the law, victims have no recourse, no hope.

  On Larry King Live, I have been confronted several times by legal analysts and defense attorneys like Mark Geragos about the fact that I, along with the police, contended Richard Albert Ricci was a perfect suspect in the Elizabeth Smart abduction case. I stand by my statement. Wisely and correctly, before his death, he was never charged. I recall that at the beginning of the search for Elizabeth, a man named Michael Edmunds, a drifter, was spotted in the neighborhood by a milk-truck driver and all hell broke loose. Edmunds was the first suspect we knew of. The press and the cops chased that poor guy all over the country until they got him. I actually agreed with Geragos on air at the time regarding Edmunds as a suspect and said, “This doesn’t make sense to me. Something doesn’t fit.” To all the critics who claim I think everybody’s guilty: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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  Now back to Ricci. Consider this: He had worked at and been inside the Smart home, had a long and extensive history of criminal behavior, had actually stolen from the Smart home even after they’d given him money and employed him. His bizarre behavior and reports that he failed a polygraph test made him a prime suspect in Elizabeth’s disappearance. Ricci was out of jail on parole for shooting a cop in the head at the time he stole from the Smarts. The stolen items were found in his trailer—a clear violation of his parole. I have no problem with his parole’s being revoked and his landing back in jail. His long history of both criminal and bizarre behavior made him a suspect. All this time, he was out free on parole for shooting an officer in the head.

  Conversely, I also stated several times on air after meeting his wife, Angela Ricci, that she seemed credible and believable. I felt she held the key to whether he was responsible. If he were ever formally charged, her testimony alone, her genuineness, would win the day without further evidence from the state. I sat with her. I looked her in the eyes. I listened to her and questioned her myself. She was for real. She, and she alone, gave me the feeling the truth had not been uncovered. I could not reconcile her story and demeanor with the mathematical equation of Ricci’s being the perfect suspect. It didn’t fit. Now I know them both to be true. The reality was that he was the perfect suspect and she was telling the truth.

  I remember one of my favorite judges I ever practiced before was the Honorable Luther Alverson. The former barber turned out to be one of the greatest judges ever to take the bench. His jury instructions ring in my mind to this day. He would look solemnly at the jury and charge them that they, the jury, were the sole judge of the facts and the evidence as well as the credibility of the witnesses. It was their duty, as best they could, to reconcile the evidence so as to make all witnesses speak the truth, imparting perjury to no one. In other words, sometimes the facts don’t jibe, don’t reconcile. The truth can be complicated and confusing, but there is a way to make all witnesses, all people concerned, speak the truth. Angela Ricci spoke the truth. I O B J E C T I O N !

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  also spoke the truth and will not back down or pretend it didn’t happen.

  Although Ricci made a perfect suspect, he didn’t do the deed.

  I believe in looking at all the facts as they truly exist, without blind-ers or rose-colored glasses, without a sugarcoating to make them easier going down. I don’t mean the facts after they’ve been airbrushed and cleaned up and powdered and perfumed before being admitted in evidence at trial. I’m talking about the truth before it’s twisted and contorted and argued away. I mean the truth, the whole truth. I look at those facts and make a deduction. That’s not illegal. Some of the evidence might be ruled inadmissible, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and I can’t form an educated and calculated opinion based on that evidence. The defense doesn’t want to hear that. Maybe they want to believe that if something isn’t admitted into court, they can pretend that it doesn’t exist. But it does.

  Evidence exists even when the jury doesn’t get to hear it. Evidence exists that Scott Peterson did not want to have a child. He was hiding things from the police and then-girlfriend Amber Frey. He changed his story about where he was Christmas Eve afternoon. Many people know that these things happened. People know Nicole Brown was battered, and they know about the Bronco “chase.” The jury didn’t hear that—

  but it is true.

  Ever since I looked down from the witness stand at Keith’s killer and he couldn’t look me in the eyes, I have put stock in behavioral evidence—how someone behaves after a crime. At a vigil held for his wife just days after she went missing, Peterson arrived late and did not sit with the rest of the family—family friend Sandy Rickard testified that despite repeated pleas from Sharon Rocha, Peterson never responded to her questions about Laci’s activities and state of mind the day she vanished. Incredibly, Rickard told the jury that Peterson put Rocha off with excuses about having other things to do. These are perfect examples of behavioral evidence. So is the fact that Peterson grabbed a stack of fly-ers with his wife’s picture on them one afternoon but instead of going out to put them up, went and played golf. I interviewed the manager of the 3 0 8

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  Red Lion Inn in Mo
desto at the command center set up by the volunteers searching for Laci, who saw these things happen. I believe him.

  The jury never heard his testimony, but it is the truth.

  In analyzing cases, I take into account something that is not allowed into court when weighing the evidence, and that is statistics. Solving murders isn’t divine intervention—it’s common sense. I know that most women who are murdered are most likely killed by an acquaintance: a husband, a lover, a boyfriend, the grocery-store clerk, someone they know, someone familiar. When investigating murder cases, police start with the family and move outward in bigger and bigger circles. They start with the home, then go to the office, then to the apartment complex, then to the neighborhood. Stranger-on-stranger murder does not constitute the majority of homicide. That is statistically proven. I know this.

  The jury can never hear that fact, but it’s the truth.

  The criminal justice system operates at a relentless pace. I’ve written about striking one jury while the other jury is out deliberating—

  there is a constant onslaught of cases. Prosecutors don’t have much time to stop and take stock of what’s happening. Writing about these issues has reminded me of cases I haven’t thought of in a really long time.

  Every one left its mark, because in nearly every case I dealt with victims of violent crime—victims whom a guilty verdict couldn’t heal, nor could it bring back to them the person who was gone forever.

  In 2004, I covered the trial of Lynn Turner, an Atlanta woman convicted of murdering her husband, police officer Glenn Turner, by poisoning him with antifreeze. Glenn, then thirty-one, was admitted to the hospital with flulike symptoms in March 1995 but was released. He died the next day. His death was initially attributed to an enlarged heart. Six years later, Turner’s boyfriend, firefighter Randy Thompson, thirty-two, with whom she was having an affair at the time of her husband’s death, died of the same symptoms. His death was also ruled as heart failure. At the insistence of the victims’ mothers, the local medical examiner ran additional tests only to find calicum oxalate crystals—a sign of ethylene glycol known to be the fatal ingredient in O B J E C T I O N !

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  antifreeze—in Thompson’s kidneys. An examination of Glenn Turner’s body revealed the presence of the same crystals.

  Due to the similarities in the two deaths, the court ruled that the jurors could hear evidence against Turner in Thompson’s death, although she was not charged with the killing at the time. The jury found her guilty of her husband’s murder and sentenced her to life in prison. As of this writing, charges are pending against Lynn Turner for Thompson’s death.

  After the trial, I spoke to the families of both men. Thompson’s father said he was relieved the defendant was finally being tried. The family had pleaded with law-enforcement officials to take action long before they did. He ended our conversation by saying, “But he’s still gone . . . ou r son is still gone.” The bottom line is, even after a conviction like Turner’s, there is nothing joyful in the justice system. That’s the reality. There are no happy endings in the courtroom. In this case, the trial revealed that there was a second victim and now there will be a second trial, for the death penalty. Sometimes there is vindication in a courtroom, but never will you find a Hollywood happy ending.

  One thing I love about arguing cases on television—and in this book—is that I don’t have a judge tossing out truthful evidence deemed inadmissible under the law. I remember one case, in which a millionaire was on trial for the murder of his wife. I never got to tell the jury he refused to pay his wife’s funeral bill. He had millions but loathed his wife—the mother of his children—so much that he refused to pay the bill for her funeral. The judge ruled it out as nonprobative, as proving nothing. I disagree. Most families care deeply about the treatment the victim receives and the care their beloved gets at a funeral. I know I did. It is the last thing we can do for the ones we love—bury them. The jury never heard this behavioral evidence. Defense lawyers will argue until they are blue in the face that it means nothing. But it does. And that’s the truth.

  On air, there is no judge censoring the truth. On Closing Arguments, my show at Court TV, I was allowed to speak the truth that 3 1 0

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  defendant Lynn Turner cried in the courtroom in front of the jury but less than ten minutes later she was giggling and laughing out loud, hug-ging friends, and yakking on her cell phone out in the courthouse parking lot. The jury never knew that, but I did. I can talk about what it means that Scott Peterson turned the baby’s nursery into a storage room within weeks of Laci’s disappearance, what it means that he sweet-talked his mistress while the police and volunteers worked day and night to find his wife or her body. I can analyze what it means that, when asked if he forced the accuser to have sex, Kobe Bryant paused, for a long time, before he answered no. I can talk about what it means that Robert Blake did not try to save or at least comfort his wife as she lay dying in his car. What I would have given to have the chance, if not to save, but only to comfort Keith as he left this world.

  Often people will ask me, “How do you talk about these cases and not get upset?” The reality is, I do. When I do Larry King Live, they always have a box of tissues sitting there for me. They know to take the camera off me if I get upset and then come back on when I get myself together again. I very frequently cry during commercial breaks when I hear about a victim—sometimes it happens even if I just look at a photo of the person in life. I cried right through the van Dam trial. I’ve choked up on air before—and in jury trials I couldn’t help it. It’s the human element of these cases that pains me. To me, that’s what the system is all about—to protect not only the defendant but also the victim.

  I don’t know how you can pretend it’s a laboratory experiment, that human emotion, pain, and sorrow are not part of it.

  While I know that there are thousands of people watching and listening, when I’m on television and radio, I never think of it. I keep my mind on the victim involved and the truth as I see it. To me, everything is about seeking justice, in whatever forum I find myself. I have a job hosting daily live trial coverage on Court TV and a show weeknights on CNN Headline News doing battle over legal issues. I do not seek or get clients from my appearances. I am not paid for my appearances on O B J E C T I O N !

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  Larry King Live, Oprah, or the morning shows; I work and speak out because I believe in what I’m saying. My opinions are not for sale.

  Each night, my conviction to speak out on behalf of regular, hardworking people is renewed by viewers who call in offering encourage-ment. Even though I never see their faces, their voices are enough to keep me believing and struggling. To those people, I want to say thank you from my heart.

  I also get a lot of calls from viewers, asking me why I don’t smile more on television. I try to take those comments in stride, but I always wind up thinking, What’s there to smile about? When I’m on air, analyzing a murder or child-molestation case, it’s not just a television appearance. I’m talking about real-life tragedy, involving real people. What am I supposed to smile about?

  I’ve seen firsthand how badly things have spun out of control in the courtroom. I’ve tried as best I can to share what I have seen with you and offer remedies. It’s time we took a hard look at what’s wrong with our justice system. It is all we have. There are two things that set us apart from the animal kingdom: our opposable thumbs and the decision we have made as a society to live by the law, to protect those less powerful and less fortunate than others. I believe in our justice system with all my heart. I do not want to see the day it buckles under its own weight, under attack from all sides.

  I have great hope that we are and always will be a nation of laws, where every voice, including those that are not blessed with fame or fortune, those victims who are not considered in the Constitution—and even my voice—will be heard. I am optimistic that, as wonderful and powerful as our justice s
ystem is and as proud as Lady Justice stands guarding the courts, the best is yet to come. I am willing to fight for that day in court and on air, I am willing to wage battle to freely do what I have done here, with you, in this book: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.

  ACKN OWLED G M ENTS

  FROM MY HEART, I THANK MY DEAR FRIEND AND

  coauthor, Diane, who believes in me and this story. Our long days and nights of work together bring a smile to my heart . . . no words serve to thank you, dear friend. We have shared so much more than our book . . .

  and it all started with a cup of coffee.

  To Bob Miller, Will Schwalbe, Ellen Archer, Katie Wainwright, and Zareen Jaffrey, who made Objection! possible, thank you for giving me this forum, friends. My special thank-you to our editor, Gretchen Young, who believed in our message long before we ever met. You walked into the room and suddenly everything was possible. I don’t know any other words than “thank you.”

  To Court TV and Henry Schleiff, thank you for the years of trials, the opportunities you’ve given me. To Larry and the wonderful staff at Larry King Live, Wendy and Dean, you allowed the victims’ voices to be heard. Thank you to Mr. Slaton, who gave me a courtroom to find my voice.

  And above all, to my dearest family and my beloved, you are my joy and my rock. You accept my flaws and find joy in my triumphs—

  what good are they without you? Thank you for weathering at my side all the years of courtroom battle, the highs and the lows. And Father God, thank you for your strength, and for all my many blessings.

  —Nancy

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  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  I had the good fortune to receive an incredible amount of support and wise counsel from many sources during the writing of this book. All of it is deeply appreciated.

  Thank you, Nancy, for trusting me with your story and for your friendship. Your passion for your work is incredible and inspiring. It’s been quite a journey.