LawNewz.com founder Dan Abrams appeared on Good Morning America Tuesday with his favorite sparring partner Nancy Grace. This time they fought over the shocking plea deal of a woman accused of killing her fiancé by tampering with his kayak. Angelika Graswald copped to criminally negligent homicide Monday at an Orange County, New York courtroom. Prosecutors originally said she intentionally killed Vincent Viafore in 2015, but even though she admitted to causing his death, she said she didn’t mean to end his life.
Surprise! Abrams and Grace had completely different takes on this. And look, we’re just going to be honest with you, and admit that transcribing this whole thing would be too much work because they spend half the time talking over each other. So we’ll mostly stick to the play-by-play.
Abrams said this plea makes sense. The prosecutors’ case was weak despite an apparent confession recorded by investigators. (Graswald said she only admitted to the crime because detectives were asking the same questions over and over.) The rest of the tape was nowhere near as incriminating as that excerpt made it sound, Dan said.
One day, some day, Nancy Grace may agree with Abrams about something. That day was not today. She said Graswald killed Viafore to get a huge life insurance policy. Or as Grace put it: “Why don’t you just help her go to the bank, Dan Abrams, and let her cash in on her quarter-of-a-million dollars life insurance policy?”
She said that as the evidence showed, Graswald took the plug out of his kayak, refused to help him, called 911 only minutes later, and tried to cover it up by acting like she tried to save him.
“How much do you know about kayaks, Nancy?” Dan said.
That is when Grace, a former prosecutor in Georgia, and Abrams, a Columbia Law School grad and ABC’s chief legal analyst, argued about kayaks.
“The kayak sunk, Dan,” Grace said.
Abrams insisted that the missing plug wouldn’t have sunk the boat.
“Kayak sinks because of high-winds in Hudson River,” he said.
The debate ended with them arguing over whether Graswald kicked Viafore’s paddle, and whether prosecutors had a strong enough case to win.
This argument had to wrap up, however.
“The only hard part of my job in this segment is ending it,” GMA host George Stephanopoulos said.
Editor’s note: The headline has been changed to say “Kayak Sunk” not “Kayaks Suck.” The editor mis-heard what happened on-air.
[Screengrab via ABC]
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