I saw an article about Nancy Grace

Context
The Shreveport Times had an article on Nancy Grace in the Living section this morning. I had never heard of this woman before, possibly because the only television news I watch is the Daily Show and that not regularly. The gist of the article is that the suicide of her prime suspect has not lessened Ms. Grace’s zeal for pursuing the case of a missing child.

Commentary
The article in question does not appear on the Times website, so if you want to read it for yourself, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

I had a number of initial reactions to this article. The one that stuck with me was this: why is a prosecutor working for CNN instead of the courts? I think the answer emerges in Ms. Grace’s statement quoted in the fourth paragraph: “I remain dedicated to the ongoing fight for crime victims everywhere.” It’s possible that she got frustrated when she found out that in the United States, prosecutors are not supposed to be advocates for crime victims. That’s because in this country, we treat crime as an offense against society, not an individual person.

Think about it. A criminal trial is titled The State of Whatever vs. Whomever. It is often the case that district attorneys disregard the opinion of the crime victim when deciding whether or not to prosecute a case. Victims have no intrinsic right to be heard in a criminal trial, but if either side thinks their testimony will be useful, they can be compelled to appear against their will.

The paragraph above may lead you to think I’m opposed to the American judicial system. Quite the contrary, I’m its biggest fan, because I subscribe to the premise above: crime is an offense against society. Obviously rape damages a woman or man, but it also damages the threads that hold us together.

Nancy Grace and I are probably in complete agreement on the previous point, but the American judicial system says that persecuting people without due process also damages society. That’s why we have an adversarial criminal justice system. The prosecutor’s job is to speak for the “we have to punish criminals” societal interest and the defense attorney presents the interest in considering exonerating evidence and mitigating circumstances. Both of them are, therefore, “officers of the court.” Society, as represented by a jury, ideally decides which interest is more compelling in this particular case.

Nancy Grace circumvents this system. She’s an advocate for victims, so her job is to slam the people she considers to be perpetrators. OK, it’s only television, not an actual judicial proceeding, but am I the only one who thinks that suicide indicates there might be more than one victim here? Does our society have any interest we might possibly want to consider before unleashing a Nancy Grace on the world and calling it “entertainment?”

What did you see today?