This book provides one of the few voices for victims.

People will pan this book because they don't like Nancy Grace - or perhaps because they don't like the fact that the justice system has all but imploded. The point isn't that we should convict the accused before they are found guilty, but that we should force deceptive defense lawyers to stop writing fiction for their clients (making up stories that *might* convince the jury), and go back to representing their clients' rights - win or lose.

What lengths will some go to to defend (or to convict) their clients? Just about anything, from what I've seen lately. And as for television making a mockery of the justice system? People need to catch up. We're living in the age of the Internet - of instant communication. Trials have always served as entertainment. The justice system has always served to stir passions. It's just that our "community" is now so much bigger than it was. I for one am glad that at least someone like Nancy Grace is passionate about victims, victims's families and victim's rights!

The book is good, and regardless of which side of the system you generally sit on, it raises some excellent questions that I don't think any one author can answer - but that we should all be collectively thinking about.

Love ya Nancy, but HELLO!

Jackson walks, upsetting Nancy Grace and many others like her, to include myself. But who is really to blame? Who got schmucked here and was it due to our being stupid? I do think so. These weren't red neck jurors, this was not a redneck defense lawyer. They were all average levelheaded sensible Americans, smart Americans. Doesn't that say something about how a prosecutor should stand and deliver? I admit my actions, I drove 2000 miles and knocked on the jails front door, I confessed, I took the blame and I paid. My accuser did not come to court to even hear my apology, no one accepted it so I left. I think Jackson knows that. Why? We are the ones who failed, not that the defense won due to celebrity status and defense loop holes. Now Jackson risks eternity and the child may abandon all hope of justice and creation. The problem is extremism, and our lack of involvement into bettering the system to a modern age. This is not 1955 people, this is not 1880, this is 2005, we humans have come to a point of being able to take a non extreme rational true stance in our legal system but have simply ignored it, CAUSE IT IS UGLY!! Nancy Grace without wavering wades through the ugly in a desperate attempt to change it for the best, like Nancy I am trying so hard too. But Nancy I am really sorry to say your efforts are not being correctly laid down. But you are not alone, we all have failed, I have too. I praise you for your effort, I really do, but I will not lie for you, and will not support ignorance and naive thinking.
A 5 star book is a matter of opinion. A 4 star book has extremes. A 3 star book is a generally accepted worthwhile and contributing work. A 2 star book has extremes but in the opposite direction of a 4 star book. A one star book is crap and this is not crap. This book could easily be a 5 star book if one aspect were removed, the extreme point of view which is due to a serious lack of general knowledge and understanding. The 3 stars I give are since Nancy has direction, but misguided, for which I understand her. If it were not for that, this book would be border lining on 2 stars to 1. I seriously want to explain this,,,
Nancy, if you think you can blame the defense for systems failure, you certainly have closed your eyes to what the prosecution has itself DESIGNED, or you are on the one star naive ranking. Lets take Jackson as a very good if not prime example of your misunderstanding. If you want to prosecute someone successfully you have to be very smart. You have to take the middle, that hard to find place called calm, wise as serpent, harmless as Dove wisdom, not the extreme left or right. You have to have a working intelligent Strategy. This prosecutor went beyond stupid, but into daring and flaunting territory. This is not celebrity status or defense loopholes your book states. Number one reason for failure, bringing in a charge that was doomed to be rejected, conspiracy to kidnap??? Reason number 2, putting that mother on the stand!!?? Everyone in his or her right mind knows that was a stupid move. Even Juror 5 said, "You aren't snapping your finger at me!" If a prosecutor wanted to win the Jackson case, he would have pulled his EGO out of his rectum and charged Jackson with only 4 Lewd acts upon a minor. Not called the mother or any other witness. You see, this prosecutor views the process in a bovine light as Grace does. However people who vote and are selected to be on Jury duty are not Bovine cows. Jurors are generally level headed, especially the ones who finally pass much scrutiny to be selected. You see Nancy, YOU give the jury laws or more correctly put rules, that they must follow to judge the offender. Beyond reasonable doubt, if there is doubt in any area, you have created complete doubt. If the jury does not follow these rules, then they commit the crime. A juror may know in his mind the offender is guilty, but due to YOUR rules the juror must dismiss. You said to Juror number one, "Isn't your opinion the thing that matters in doing your duty as a juror!?" No Nancy, it is not the jurors opinion, look at Lady Justice, SHE IS WEARING A BLIND FOLD! Her job is to see what tips the scales based on your prosecuting legal system you created!!! It has absolutely nothing to do with opinion as you have tied the hands of the juror! This is not the doing of any defense lawyer or has anything to do with celebrity status. It has everything to do with your inability to intelligently prosecute and your lack of foresight to introduce correct bills and laws to senate and congress. With more intelligent bills and laws, you'd be much more successful! To take intelligence and diplomacy a step futher, not only should Jackson have been charged with 4 acts of lewdness, but that jail time was not in the works, but a demand he never see children and he be sent for Psychological treatment. You can't put people like Jackson or Simpson in Jail! No Jury in the USA would allow that. Everyone has watched with great awe Jackson perform, "Thiller, Just Beat it" and so on, we Americans feel a part of that, as we are a part of America. Many people all over the world said the same thing in the waiting moments for the Verdict, they felt like the verdict was being passed down to them, even the celebrity reporter in the courtroom said she felt like she was being sentenced herself before the verdict was read, and when it was read she felt relieved! Why? Because we all feel part of Jackson, you can't put an Icon in prison! You have to say, look here jury, we don't want anymore children to get molested, and we want to help Jackson too, convict him, and we will help him and you help the children. That is the intelligent ones way to solve and prosecute. We live in the 21st Century, for the love of God, stop blaming defense lawyers and celebrities, and get wise by YOU changing the legal system which is an antique in a modern world. If there is a loop hole it is only since you weren't smart enough to see it, but isn't that the nature of government mentality? You make the laws, you take the chance to prosecute, you should then be smarter. In my opinion, the entire format of the Jackson prosecution was Stone Age mentality and so is half of this book you wrote. The overwhelming evidence that I have against you is all around you, look at the repeat offenders you lock up and let out, Florida this last year alone! It is happening everywhere in the USA. The truth is the prosecution does not care to deal intelligently with offenders, but only cares to lock them up for the legal sentence to get a bust under the belt. You close your eyes to the truth, you, allow this to haunt the public time after time. The true problem with criminals is getting them to admit they did a bad thing. A mother is very good about getting her child to admit his guilt. The legal system has to take this same approach, then not make a Gladiator out of the criminal, but rehab him! Nancy Grace, your way of dealing with criminals is like putting fertilizer on dandelions in your lawn! You are afraid that people will say, oh sympathy for the bad guy and special treatment. Uh uh, Hello Nancy,,,this is the intelligent way to rid crime in our intelligent society, everything else we do with smarts seems to work very well in the USA, and seemingly better than any other country, why not try some wisdom with our legal prosecuting system for once? I love you Nancy, but move into the future, it is here. Correct me also.

Objection to Nancy Grace

This book is full of lots of raw emotion directed against defense attorneys, celebrities, judges, juries and lots of others. The pattern to it is that the emotion is directed against those either who Nancy Grace thinks are guilty or who don't think that Nancy Grace does. The book tries to very loosely offer a plan to make the criminal justice system better, but the plan is ill-defined and weak.

Her objections, summarized by me, are:

- She wants tighter controls on the behavior of the defense.
- She doesn't seem to like the jury system at all
- She wants to re-define downward the standard for guilt. Rather than prosecutors having to prove guilt, the prosecutor would be allowed to make a circumstantial or emotional case for guilt.

She spends a whole lot of time attacking defense attorneys in the book, but its not really credible because its a one-sided attack where she is blind to the possiblity of misconduct by
prosecutors.

The problem with the book is that Nancy Grace is blind to her own faults and her own behavior. She is critical of 24/7 News coverage of trials, but doesn't deal with her own large role in that coverage. She is also blind to the problems in her record as a prosecutor.

Since leaving the prosecutor's office, Nancy Grace has been sharply repremanded by three different appeals courts for unethical and illegal behavior while she was a prosecutor. Her behavior was called illegal by every judge on the Georgia Supreme Court. Georgia is not exactly a friendly place for criminal defense and the lengths the court went in calling out Nancy Grace for ethical violations was very unusual.

They said she:

- Misrepresented facts to the trial judge so that her out of state witness could access the defendants home without the knowledge of the defense. Her witness gained access by breaking down the front door. For good measure, she subsequently also entered the defendants home with CNN cameras.

- Outright misrepresented the testimony of witnesses (falsely indicating in her closing argument that a defense witness had not disagreed with an opinion of the state).

- She inserted false information regarding hearing dates into a court proceeding to gain an advantage.

- She repeatedly ignored the instructions of the court. For example, she made multiple references to issues in her opening statement that the court had ruled (previously) to be inadmissiable.

- She failed to disclose a romantic relationship she knew about between two of her witnesses to the defense. She deliberatly held back her full witness list until the start of the trial.

For those interested, the case was: Carr v. State, 267 Ga. 701, 482 S.E.2d 314 (1997). Its a very detailed case study in how Nancy Grace abused her power as a prosecutor and how she operated without any real sort of ethics.

The court summarized her conduct in really harsh language:
begin quote -

Our review of the record supports Carr's contention that the prosecuting attorney engaged in an extensive pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial.

end quote -

This isn't one bad judge, its the entire very conservative usually pro prosection Georgia Supreme Court giving that opinion.

Its also important to remember that the person involved is free today only because he was rich and had the money to hire the lawyers to fight back against what she was trying to do. Most people would have ended up in jail for the rest of their lives.

Now you can choose to think that Nancy was right in this case and that somehow the entire court system of a state is so corrupt that it is misrepresenting the facts to free a man in a corrupt manner. But if you step back from that, your left with a prosecutor in Nancy Grace whose record of abuse in court is horrible. They didn't say sort-of illegal or maybe illegal, they said illegal.

Nancy has nothing to say about this. Since she doesn't participate in any forum that she doesn't control, nobody really has the chance to ask her about it. And this isn't her only problem with an appeals court.

This is important because it shows the big flaw of the book: hypocrisy. The book gets three stars because its a very useful book to read to see the dishonesty and maybe even self-deception that is behind Nancy Grace. The legal system does have ethical problems and problems with the media. But its not just defense attorneys, its prosecutors too. Its also almost surreal to see Nancy Grace of all people object to the media culture of 24/7 surrounding trials.