Nancy Grace Dodges Lawsuit Over Guest Suicide After CNN Interview – Lies and Deceit....A History of Her Troubled Past!

The family and estate of 21 year old Melinda Duckett who committed suicide in 2006 after facing harsh questioning from talk-show host Nancy Grace regarding the disappearance of her 2 year old son Trenton, have dismissed a wrongful death and emotional distress Federal lawsuit against CNN and the host.

On September 8, 2006, the day after the interview, before the airing of the show, an emotional Duckett shot herself, a death that relatives claim was influenced by the media scrutiny created by Grace and CNN. Police, who were investigating the 2 week old disappearance of Trenton, had not yet named Melinda Duckett as a suspect in the case, but after her suicide did say that, as nearly all parents are in missing-child cases, Melinda Duckett was under suspicion from the beginning.

Grace, whose known by her on air antics of jumping to conclusions accused the woman of hiding something because Duckett did not take a lie-detector test and answered vaguely about her whereabouts when the boy disappeared from her apartment.

The lawsuit accused Grace, whose show airs on CNN's sister network HLN, of inflicting emotional distress on the 21-year-old mother with her questions about the missing boy.

As a condition of the out of court settlement, Grace must establish a $200,000 trust dedicated to finding Duckett's missing son, Trenton, and if Trenton is found alive before his 13th birthday, proceeds from the trust will transfer to him for his benefit. If he is not found by the time he would turn 13 in 2017 — or if he is found dead before then — then the remaining money will be transferred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Lie and Deceit

Graces' history of embellishment stretches back over three decades to her then Fiancee's Kenneth Griffins 1979 so-called random murder as chronicled by her in her book Objection. Grace, who has described the tragedy as the impetus for her career as a prosecutor and victims' rights advocate often publicly referrers to the incident, but her statements themselves are laced with contradictions. An Investigative report by the New York Observer in March 2006 found that despite Graces' statements to the contrary:

• Her fiancé, Keith Griffin, was shot not at random by a stranger, but by a former coworker, Tommy McCoy;

• McCoy did not have a prior criminal record and, rather than denying the crime, confessed the night of the murder;

• McCoy's jury deliberated for hours not days;

• Had not filed a string of appeals and only filed one Habeas Corpus Petition that was later dismissed.

Grace worked for nearly a decade in the Atlanta Fulton County Georgia's District Attorney's office as Special Prosecutor where her work focused on felony cases involving serial murder, serial rape, serial child molestation, and arson. Grace left the prosecutors' office after the District Attorney she had been working under decided not to run for reelection, but left a string a rebutes from courts and judges in her wake.

The Georgie Supreme Court twice commented on Grace's conduct as a Fulton County  prosecutor. First in Bell v. State,   a 1994 heroin drug trafficking case, the Justices declared a mistrial, saying that Grace had "exceeded the wide latitude of closing argument" by drawing comparisons to unrelated murder and rape cases.

In 1997, the Georgia Supreme Court was more severe, overturning the murder-arson conviction of businessman W. W. Carr in the death of his wife. While the court said its reversal was not due to these transgressions, since the case had turned primarily on  circumstantial evidence, it nevertheless concluded "the conduct of the prosecuting attorney in this case [GRACE] had demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable." Carr was freed in 2004 when The Georgia Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Fulton County had waited too long to retry him.

In 2005, a panel of the Federal 11th circuit Court of Appeals criticized Grace's conduct even while upholding convictions in her cases declaring that Grace had "played fast and loose" with her ethical duties and failed to "fulfill her responsibilities" as a prosecutor in the 1990 triple murder trial of Herbert Connell Stephens. She failed to turn evidence that pointed to other suspects over to Stephens's defense team . The court further noted that it was "difficult to conclude that Grace did not knowingly" elicit false testimony from a policeman investigator that there were no other suspects despite strong evidence to the contrary.

Duke Lacrosse scandal

Grace took an ON AIR pro-prosecution position throughout the 2006 Duke University Lacrosse case, in which Crystal Magnum, an African-American stripper and North Carolina Central University student, falsely accused three members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team of gang raping her at a party. Prior to Duke suspending its men's lacrosse team's season, Grace was heard sarcastically noting on the air that, "I'm so glad they didn't miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape!" and "Why would you go to a cop in an alleged gang rape case, say, and lie and give misleading information?" After the disbarment of District Attorney Mike Nifong, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper pronounced all three Duke players innocent of the rape charges made by Mangum. On the following broadcast of her show, Grace did not appear and a substitute reporter announced the removal of all charges.

                                      Elizabeth Smart kidnapping

During the Elizabeth Smart, Salt Lake City kidnapping case, when suspect Richard Ricci was arrested by police on the basis that he had a criminal record and had worked on the Smarts' home, Grace immediately and repeatedly proclaimed on Court TV and CNN's Larry King  that Ricci "was guilty," with  little evidence to support her  claim. She also suggested publicly that Ricci's girlfriend was involved in the cover-up of his alleged crime. Grace continued to accuse Ricci, though he died while in custody.

It was later revealed that Smart was kidnapped by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee,  individuals with whom Richard Ricci had no connection.

When Court TV confronted Grace seven months later to ask whether she was incorrect in her assertion that Ricci was guilty, and whether or not she felt bad about it in any way, she stated that Ricci was "a known ex-con, a known felon, and brought suspicion on himself, so who could blame anyone for claiming he was the perpetrator?"

Guilty or Not, Graces' Kangaroo Court continues to pass judgement.