Despite the fact that she obsessively covered the George Zimmerman murder trial, it would seem that Nancy Grace, the left-wing former Georgia prosecutor who has become an HLN television host, missed a few things in the actual courtroom proceedings.
Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell notes that on Saturday, moments before the verdict in the trial was read, the hilariously named Grace uttered the words “f--king coon” slowly and deliberately on air. Network censors either failed or elected not to bleep the words.
Grace was speaking with Martin family lawyer Daryl Parks when she dropped the f-bomb and repeated the archaic racial slur as proof positive that George Zimmerman’s actions were fueled by racism (transcript follows). She also incorrectly stated that Zimmerman had called 9-1-1 when, in fact, he had called a non-emergency police number:
I’ll tell you what I think made a difference. When that 9-1-1 tape first came out — and everybody, get ready, this is graphic language — when it first came out that Zimmerman had said ‘fucking coon’ on the 9-1-1 call, to me, that was open-and-shut that that showed open ill will and hatred. Now they’ve revised it to say he said ‘These punks, they always get away with it.’ I’m wondering if that reinterpretation of what he said made a difference as to a jury finding ill-will in Mr. Zimmerman’s heart.
In court, the defense accepted that Zimmerman had said punks as did the prosecution (probably because Zimmerman is part black himself). At no time did the prosecution claim that the defendant had said coons.
In fact, the opening argument of the prosecution, made by assistant state attorney John Guy, actually started off with the phrase in court as the video below shows:
In his lawsuit against NBC News, Zimmerman cited the network for also claiming he had said coons in addition to producing deliberately edited audio which made it look like he was suspicious of Martin because he was black.
Just for the record, Grace's colleagues over at CNN also mistakenly believed Zimmerman had said coons initially but later revised their opinion. As NewsBusters subsequently reported, when CNN first claimed Zimmerman had said coons, it did so against some internal recommendations warning them that he did not say the word.
