| Nancy Grace | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Name: | Nancy Ann Grace |
| Born: | October 23, 1959 |
| Birth Hometown: | Macon, Georgia |
| Occupation: | Political commentator Television personality Former prosecutor |
| Years active: | 1996–present |
Nancy Ann Grace (born October 23, 1959) is an American legal commentator and television journalist. She hosted Nancy Grace, a nightly celebrity news and current affairs show on HLN, from 2005 to 2016, and Court TV's Closing Arguments from 1996 to 2007. She also co-wrote the book Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System. Grace was also the arbiter of Swift Justice with Nancy Grace in the syndicated courtroom reality show's first season.
Grace was formerly a prosecutor in a local district attorney's office in Atlanta, Georgia. She frequently discusses issues from what she describes as a victims' rights standpoint, with an outspoken style that has brought her both praise and criticism.
Early life[]
Nancy Grace was born in Macon, Georgia, the youngest of three children, to factory worker Elizabeth Grace and Mac Grace, a freight agent for Southern Railway. Her older siblings are brother Mac Jr. and sister Ginny. The Graces are longtime members of Macon's Liberty United Methodist Church, where Elizabeth plays the organ and Mac Sr. was once a Sunday School teacher.
Grace graduated from Macon's Windsor Academy in 1977. She attended Valdosta State University, and later received a B.A. from Mercer University. As a student, Grace was a fan of Shakespearean literature, and intended to become an English professor after graduating from college. But after the murder of her fiancé Keith Griffin when she was 19, Grace decided to enroll in law school and went on to become a felony prosecutor and a supporter of victims' rights.
She received her Juris Doctor from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer, where she was a member of the law review. She went on to earn a Master of Laws in constitutional and criminal law from New York University. She has written articles and opinion pieces for legal periodicals, including the American Bar Association Journal. She worked as a clerk for a federal court judge and practiced antitrust and consumer protection law with the Federal Trade Commission. She taught litigation at the Georgia State University College of Law and business law at GSU's School of Business. As of 2006, she is part of Mercer University's board of trustees and adopted a section of the street surrounding the law school.
Career[]
Grace worked for nearly a decade in the Atlanta-Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney's office as Special Prosecutor. Her work focused on felony cases involving serial murder, serial rape, serial child molestation, and serial arson. Grace left the prosecutors' office after the District Attorney she had been working under decided not to run for reelection.
While a prosecutor, she was reprimanded by the Supreme Court of Georgia for withholding evidence and for making improper statements in a 1997 arson and murder case. The court overturned the conviction in that case and found that Grace's behavior "demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness and was inexcusable." As well, a 2005 federal appeals opinion by Judge William H. Pryor, Jr. found that she "played fast and loose" with core ethical rules in a 1990 triple murder case, including the withholding of evidence and allowing a police detective to testify falsely under oath. The 1990 murder conviction was upheld despite Grace's prosecutorial misconduct.
After leaving the Fulton County prosecutors' office, Grace was approached by and accepted an offer from Court TV founder Steven Brill to do a legal commentary show alongside Johnnie Cochran. When Cochran left the show, Grace was moved to a solo trial coverage show on Court TV, she hosted Trial Heat from 1996-2004, then Closing Arguments from 2004-2007, replacing Lisa Bloom and James Curtis, both of whom were hosting Trial Heat at that point.
In February 2005, she began hosting a regular primetime legal analysis show called Nancy Grace on CNN Headline News (now HLN) in addition to her Court TV show.On May 9, 2007, Grace announced that she would be leaving Court TV to focus more on her CNN Headline News Program and charity work. She did her last show on Court TV on June 19, 2007.
Grace has a distinctive interviewing style mixing vocal questions with multimedia stats displays. The Foundation of American Women in Radio & Television has presented Nancy Grace with two Gracie Awards for her Court TV show.
While still hosting Nancy Grace, she also hosted Swift Justice with Nancy Grace which premiered September 13, 2010, and ran until May 2011. Grace left the show due to productions moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles. In September 2011, Judge Jackie Glass, who is known for presiding over the O. J. Simpson robbery case, took over Grace's place. The show continued for one more season and ceased production in 2012.
Grace had been covering the Casey Anthony story for years. After the controversial verdict finding Casey Anthony not guilty, her Nancy Grace show on HLN had its highest ratings ever in the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. hour slots on Tuesday, July 5, 2011.
On October 13, 2016, at the end of her contract, Grace hosted her last show.
On July 13, 2019, an Oxygen TV channel true crime series began, hosted by Grace and titled Injustice with Nancy Grace with criminal cases being the subject of episodes that seek to bring to light unjust accusations, bungled investigations, arcane evidence, new motives, and shocking sentences.
Other television work[]
Dancing With the Stars[]
Grace was a contestant on the thirteenth season of Dancing with the Stars, which began airing on September 19, 2011. She was partnered with pro-dancer Tristan MacManus. The couple lasted for 8 weeks and placed 5th overall in the competition before being eliminated on November 8, 2011, one week shy of the semi-finals.
Raising Hope[]
In early April 2012, Grace appeared on the last two episodes of the second season of the TV show Raising Hope playing herself.
Law & Order[]
On May 22, 2007, Grace appeared in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Screwed" the season 8 finale, playing herself opposite Star Jones.
Hancock[]
Grace has a cameo appearance in the film Hancock, starring Will Smith.
Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry[]
In June 2017, Grace sat for a reading by purported psychic medium Tyler Henry on his E! TV show, Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry. Grace believed Henry was communicating with her dead father, as well as murdered fiance, and said she had received closure. After the reading Grace said "there were many things [Henry] said were impossible for him to have gleaned on the internet or even a computer search, speeches I've given, of things that have happened, I find it difficult to believe … I find many of the things he said to be absolutely amazing." In April 2018, Susan Gerbic analyzed the reading, and detailed in Nancy Grace Should be Ashamed of Herself!exactly how Grace had unfortunately been fooled by the usual fraudulent techniques of cold reading and hot reading used by "grief vampires" like Henry to convince people that they have paranormal powers.
Further work[]
Grace’s first book, Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System, was published in 2005 by Hyperion and became a New York Times bestseller. Her first work of fiction, The Eleventh Victim, also published by Hyperion, was released on August 11, 2009. The mystery thriller follows a young psychology student, Hailey Dean, whose fiancé is murdered just weeks before their wedding. She goes on to prosecute violent crime and is forced to reckon with what she left behind. Publishers Weekly described it as "less than compelling"; however, it was also a New York Times bestseller and became the foundation for the Hailey Dean Mysteries series of, thus far, nine movies on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries channel. A third New York Times bestselling novel, Death on the D-List, was published by Hyperion on August 10, 2010, and followed by Murder in the Courthouse, published by BenBella Books in 2016.
Grace has also helped staff a hotline at an Atlanta battered women's center for 10 years. Since January 10, 2017, Grace hosted a daily Podcast on Crime Online called "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace".
Personal life[]
Marriage and motherhood[]
In April 2007, Grace married David Linch, an Atlanta investment banker, in a small private ceremony. The two had met while she was studying at Mercer University in the 1970s. Grace, who had given up on marriage after the death of her fiancé, said, "We've been in touch all these years, and a lot of time, we were separated by geography and time. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. I told my family only two days before the wedding."
On June 26, 2007, an emotional Grace announced on her HLN talk show that her life had "taken a U-turn" in that she was pregnant and expecting twins due in January 2008. Lucy Elizabeth and John David were born in November 2007.