Nancy Grace has faced two significant lawsuits tied to her television work: a defamation case brought by Michael Skakel over false on-air claims about DNA evidence, and a wrongful death case filed by the family of Melinda Duckett, who died by suicide hours before her interview with Grace aired. Both settled before trial, with no admission of liability but with concrete concessions from Grace and her networks.
The Michael Skakel Defamation Case
In January 2012, Grace and TruTV correspondent Beth Karas discussed Skakel on HLN. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, had been convicted in 2002 for the 1975 murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut. On air, Grace asked whether Skakel had been “up in a tree masturbating trying to look into her bedroom window.” Karas answered that “his DNA was found, yes … up in the tree.” Grace added: “it was sperm, there I said it, so he places himself there up in a tree masturbating looking down at her window, and whoa she turns up dead within a couple of hours.”1Courthouse News Service. Nancy Grace Loses Bid to Toss Defamation Claim
No such DNA evidence existed. None had been presented at Skakel’s trial, and none had been recovered from the crime scene. In October 2012, Skakel sued Grace, Karas, Time Warner, and Turner Broadcasting System in federal court in Connecticut for defamation and false light invasion of privacy. He called the statements “literally false,” said the defendants knew there was no such evidence, and sought punitive damages plus removal of the segment from the network’s websites and YouTube.2Courthouse News Service. Kennedy Cousin Accuses Nancy Grace of Libel
Why a Federal Judge Let the Case Proceed
Grace and her co-defendants moved to dismiss. They argued the statements were “substantially true” in light of Skakel’s murder conviction and that any extra reputational harm was minimal. On March 7, 2014, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant rejected that argument in a 27-page ruling.3Connecticut Post. Judge: Skakel Can Sue Nancy Grace for Slander The docket number was Civil Action No. 3:12-CV-01669.4GovInfo. Skakel v. Nancy Grace, Civil Action No. 3:12-CV-01669
Bryant found the defendants’ statements “were not only substantially false, they were literally false.”1Courthouse News Service. Nancy Grace Loses Bid to Toss Defamation Claim She also refused to apply the subsidiary meaning doctrine, which would have treated the false DNA claim as adding little to the damage already done by a murder conviction. In her words, “Grace’s and Karas’s comments are not merely a gloss on Skakel’s conviction; their statements imply that hard, unfeeling, scientific and direct evidence linked Skakel to the scene and conclusively corroborated his guilt, when such scientific certainty did not exist.”5Hollywood Reporter. Judge Allows Slander Lawsuit Against Nancy Grace She declined to decide whether Skakel was a public figure, letting the case move forward without resolving whether the tougher “actual malice” standard applied.
How the Skakel Case Ended
Skakel withdrew the suit in late October 2014 after reaching a settlement. HLN posted a correction on the show’s website: “HLN’s Nancy Grace show mistakenly reported that DNA evidence linking Michael Skakel to the murder of Martha Moxley was found at the crime scene. This aspect of its report is inaccurate. There was never any DNA evidence offered in the trial linking Michael Skakel to the murder of Martha Moxley.”6The Hour. Skakel Lawsuit Against Nancy Grace Settled All references to the contested statements were pulled from Turner Broadcasting websites. Financial terms were not disclosed.7Hollywood Reporter. Nancy Grace Settles Slander Lawsuit
The criminal case against Skakel later collapsed on its own. The Connecticut Supreme Court vacated his conviction in 2018 after finding his trial lawyer had failed to present a key alibi witness. He had served more than 11 years in prison. In 2020, state prosecutors dropped the charge rather than retry him.8Politico. Kennedy Cousin Files Lawsuit Over Murder Conviction in Connecticut A dissenting Connecticut Supreme Court justice described the case against him as “devoid of any forensic evidence or eyewitness testimony linking the petitioner to the crime.”9New York Times. Michael Skakel Conviction Reversed
The Melinda Duckett Wrongful Death Case
The Skakel suit was not Grace’s first. In September 2006, Grace taped a telephone interview with Melinda Duckett, whose two-year-old son Trenton had gone missing in Leesburg, Florida. On the tape, Grace pressed Duckett on her movements the day Trenton disappeared and accused her of “hiding something.” Duckett’s family later described the questioning as an aggressive cross-examination.10CNN. Nancy Grace Sued Over Guest’s Suicide
On September 8, 2006, hours before the segment was scheduled to air, Duckett shot herself at her grandparents’ home. CNN and the show’s producers aired the interview anyway.10CNN. Nancy Grace Sued Over Guest’s Suicide That November, Duckett’s parents sued Grace and CNN in federal court in Ocala, Florida, alleging wrongful death and intentional infliction of emotional distress and claiming the interview contributed to her death.11ABC News. Nancy Grace Settles Lawsuit Over Melinda Duckett’s Suicide
The Settlement Terms
The case settled in 2010, roughly four years after it was filed. Grace and CNN funded a $200,000 trust, the “Trenton John Duckett Irrevocable Trust,” to support the search for the missing boy. If Trenton was not found alive by his 13th birthday, the money would go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If found before then, his adoptive grandmother would manage the funds until he turned 18.12Palm Beach Post. Nancy Grace Settles Lawsuit With Duckett Estate
As part of the deal, lawyers for the Duckett estate issued a written apology to Grace and CNN. They said the defendants had “engaged in no intentional wrongdoing” and apologized for “any suggestion” that the interview had been designed to cause the family distress or contribute to Duckett’s death.12Palm Beach Post. Nancy Grace Settles Lawsuit With Duckett Estate Trenton Duckett has never been found. Leesburg police identified his mother as the sole suspect in his disappearance.13Orlando Sentinel. Josh Duckett Calls Settlement of Nancy Grace Lawsuit a Blessing
Earlier Appellate Findings Against Grace as a Prosecutor
The television lawsuits were not the first time courts scrutinized Grace’s conduct. Before her broadcasting career, she prosecuted cases in the Fulton County District Attorney’s office in Atlanta from 1987 to 1996, and appellate courts criticized her handling of at least three of them.
In 1990, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Grace “played fast and loose” with her ethical obligations. The court found she had failed to disclose information about other potential suspects and had knowingly relied on a detective’s false testimony that no such suspects existed. The panel upheld the conviction anyway, finding the misconduct had not changed the outcome.14Facing South. Falling From Grace
In 1994, the Georgia Supreme Court voted 6–1 to reverse a heroin trafficking conviction Grace had won, ruling that she “exceeded the wide latitude of closing argument” by invoking serial rape and drug-related murders unrelated to the case.14Facing South. Falling From Grace
In 1997, the Georgia Supreme Court found in the arson-and-murder prosecution of Weldon Wayne Carr that Grace had withheld evidence from the defense and made improper opening and closing arguments. Chief Justice Robert Benham wrote that her conduct “demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable.”14Facing South. Falling From Grace These were appellate rulings on her prosecutorial work, not civil lawsuits, and no damages flowed from them.