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.
[3] 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.
[2] But after the murder of her fiancé Keith Griffin in a workplace shooting 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.
[9] While a prosecutor, Grace 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.
"[10] 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.
After the controversial verdict finding Casey Anthony not guilty, her Nancy Grace show on HLN had its highest ratings ever in the 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. hour slots on Tuesday, July 5, 2011.
[13] In a 2011 New York Times article, David Carr wrote, "Since her show began in 2005, the presumption of innocence has found a willful enemy in the former prosecutor turned broadcast judge-and-jury".
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Carr that Grace, as an attorney and reporter, "has managed to demean both professions with her hype, rabid persona, and sensational analysis.
Grace made statements such as users were "fat and lazy" and that anyone who disagreed with her was "lethargic, sitting on the sofa, eating chips" to CNN's news correspondent Brooke Baldwin during a segment covering legalization in Colorado on January 6, 2014.
[15] On October 11, 2016, The Jim Norton and Sam Roberts Show had Grace as a guest, at which time they accused her of capitalizing on others' tragedies for her personal gain.
"[27] During the trial of David Westerfield in 2002 for the kidnap and murder of Danielle van Dam, Grace made it clear on Larry King Live that she thought he was guilty, but she got some facts wrong.
That evidence could be innocently explained if, at some previous time while it was parked unlocked in the streets outside her home, van Dam had entered that vehicle, perhaps to explore it out of curiosity.
"[35] On November 21, 2006, The Smoking Gun exposed pending litigation on behalf of the estate of Melinda Duckett, asserting a wrongful death claim against CNN and Grace.
[45] David Carr wrote that Grace took her show to the trial scene in Orlando, Florida in order to "hurl invective from a close, intimate distance.
These lawyers on TV during the Anthony trial only offered one side, everybody believed them, and now you've got a big chunk of the population that thinks the legal system let them down.
[44]On the day Anthony was sentenced on misdemeanor counts of lying to investigators, a supporter held a sign reading: "Nancy Grace, stop trying to ruin innocent lives.
In a televised appearance with media expert Dan Abrams, Grace stated about Anthony's being freed from jail, No one wishes for vigilante justice; nobody advocates that.
According to the criminal complaint, Medrano told police she had consumed almost an entire fifth of vodka the night before her son died and fell asleep with him on a couch.
During one of her shows, Grace brought a bottle of vodka onto her set and poured shots to demonstrate how much Medrano had drunk the night of her son's death.
[56] Page released a statement after the episode aired, stating that he was under the assumption that he would be sharing stories in Warrior's memory and did not know that steroids would be the only topic discussed.
On May 22, 2007, Grace appeared in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Screwed" the season 8 finale, playing herself opposite Star Jones.
: 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.
In March 2006, an article in the New York Observer suggested that in her book Objection!, Grace had embellished the story of her college fiancé's 1979 murder and the ensuing trial to make it better support her image.
"[76] In response to Keith Olbermann's claims in a March 2007 Rolling Stone interview in which he was quoted as saying, "Anybody who would embellish the story of their own fiancé's murder should spend that hour a day not on television but in a psychiatrist's chair,"[77] Grace stated, "I did not put myself through law school and fight for all those years for victims of crime to waste one minute of my time, my energy, and my education in a war of words with Keith Olbermann, whom I've never met nor had any disagreement.
[79] In the episode "Haystack" of Law & Order: SVU, an overzealous reporter named Cindy Marino (played by Kali Rocha) causes the mother of a kidnapped son to commit suicide.
[83] The sketch parodied Grace's reactions to Michael Richards' infamous Laugh Factory appearance, the O. J. Simpson trial and her own parking fines.
"[86] Grace would later be impersonated by Saturday Night Live cast member Abby Elliott in the sketch 'So You've Committed A Crime... And You Think You Can Dance?
[90] Much of Grace's dialogue from the sketch was lifted directly from an interview she conducted on January 6, 2013, with Brooke Baldwin[92] on CNN's News Room,[93] in particular the phrase 'I've got a sneaking suspicion that you are pro-pot.
In an interview with actress Missi Pyle, who played Abbot in the film, Grace told pundits she was "very flattered"[97] and that she "laugh[ed] out loud at it,"[96] calling Gone Girl her new favorite portrayal.