I stopped watching Larry King Live some time ago. Part of it was because of King’s incessant focus on celebrity crime cases, or crime cases where he turned the accused into a celebrity of infamy. And I’ve never been a fan of these high-publicity crime cases. In my opinion, we need a law like some countries have where the media is forbidden to report on a crime case until it is resolved by the courts.

Yes, I know, free speech and the first amendment. But then there’s also amendments 4-8, which protect the rights of the accused; I think there’s enough evidence here that the founding fathers were more than just a little concerned about how we treat defendants in criminal cases. And media reporting on court cases can severely impact the outcome of a trial. So which right outweighs the other? Considering that media coverage of these trials is almost purely gratuitous, for titillation and little else, it seems a no-brainer to me. Considering how much attention the founders paid to this issue, I think Americans give far too little respect to defendants’ rights. In fact, conservatives tend to hold such rights in contempt, Constitution or not.

One component of the reason I don’t watch King anymore is what I heard him say on more than one occasion: that if an accused person is innocent, they would naturally want to go on national TV and make their case; so if they do not do this, it makes them look guilty. For King to say this is, in my opinion, criminally negligent, certainly a conflict of interest, and absolutely outrageous. If you are accused of a crime, especially if you are innocent, the last thing you want to do is to go on national TV and discuss the case. Prosecutors live for a defendant dumb enough to go out in public and make a variety of statements concerning their case. The more a defendant says, the more chance there is that there will be some inconsistency, which a prosecutor can then cash in for a guilty verdict in court.

If you think that an innocent person cannot be made to look guilty to a jury, then you’re naive. To speak on an issue without making even the slightest error in consistency, even if you are positive that you’ve got it all down cold, is wildly improbable. You’re bound to get something wrong.

So not only was King wrong factually, but he was guilty of extortion as well. King makes his bread and butter by getting such guests on his show. In making his statement, he was essentially saying that if such accused people don’t come on his show, he’ll pronounce them guilty on his show.

But even King is not the worst offender. Somehow, King has always found a way to discover the most offensively vile person possible to argue the why-the-accused-is-guilty side of things. Strangely, this person is almost always a blonde woman, one of the many in the ranks of blonde bimbo Republican pundits, of which there seems to be a peculiarly endless supply.

One of the worst has been Nancy Grace. Apparently convinced that even the slightest appearance of guilt is proof of pure evil, this woman incessantly goes for the jugular of any poor sap accused of a crime. And recently, she may have driven a young woman to suicide:

Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV’s famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: “Where were you? Why aren’t you telling us where you were that day?”

A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy. …

Duckett’s family members disputed any suggestion that she hurt her son. They said that the strain of her son’s disappearance pushed her to the brink, and the media sent her over the edge.

“Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end,” Duckett’s grandfather Bill Eubank said Tuesday. “She wasn’t one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn’t get away from each other. She wouldn’t hurt a bug.”

To me, the issue of whether Duckett turns out to be innocent or guilty is moot. In the United States, we theoretically have a principle of assuming innocence in criminal cases until guilt is proven. Under this principle, Grace’s actions are so reprehensible as to be virtually criminal themselves. When presented with someone who might have committed a crime–who was barely an official suspect in the case–who either way is obviously going to be severely distraught–you do not take this person and bash their head onto a table, drilling them on national TV like they were some despicable criminal. Sure, the person might be guilty–but they might be innocent, and you are supposed to presume the latter. And if the person is innocent, what Grace did was inexcusable. Though I’m sure it made for great ratings. Good show, CNN.

In response to the news of the suicide, Grace’s spokeswoman issued a statement that emphasized Grace’s concern for finding the missing boy, and completely sidestepped how Grace treated the mother. How sweet. I’m so glad this wasn’t about getting ratings or venting arrogant presumption, but was purely about helping a little boy by pushing his mother over the edge and making her shoot herself to death.

In fact, in a later interview, Grace actually said she felt no responsibility for the outcome, and said that “If anything, I would suggest that guilt made Melinda Duckett commit suicide.”

Grace, of course, as sick as she is, is only a symptom of a sick society, one where we love to assume guilt. Which is why we need that media ban on active criminal court cases.