A Manhattan nurse charged with murdering her estranged husband in 2020 in what she’s claimed was self protection is headed to trial.
A decide on Tuesday denied a request by prosecutors to scale back the homicide fees towards Tracy McCarter to manslaughter — as advocates accused Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg of reneging on his marketing campaign promise to not prosecute home violence victims.
Performing Supreme Courtroom Justice Diane Kiesel dominated the DA’s Workplace had failed to supply sufficient justification for his or her shift in perspective, discovering their movement to downgrade the costs unconvincing and even contradictory to the regulation.
The 46-year-old mom was charged with homicide by former DA Cy Vance’s workplace in March 2020. She says she stabbed her husband James Murray after he drunkenly confirmed up at her residence, demanded cash and threatened her life.
Neighbors discovered her over Murray’s physique attempting to cease him from bleeding out and screaming for assist. They recalled Murray occurring an intoxicated rampage within the constructing earlier that day.
McCarter spent six months on Rikers Island after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed her grand jury listening to, which resulted in her indictment for homicide.
However her legal professionals, in addition to home abuse survivors advocates, have famous that the DA’s workplace — then underneath Vance — didn’t correctly inform the grand jury about Murray’s historical past of violence, and his intoxication ranges the day of his demise.
McCarter’s case grew to become a problem within the crowded race for Manhattan DA final 12 months, and Bragg promised on the marketing campaign path to not prosecute victims of abuse.
He even tweeted: “I #StandWithTracy. Prosecuting a home violence survivor who acted in self-defense is unjust.”
McCarter’s mom Darleen Cobb just lately instructed The Submit the so-called progressive prosecutor has failed her daughter.
“DA Bragg gave us the hope we didn’t have when he was elected primarily based on his tweet that he Stands With Tracy throughout his marketing campaign,” she mentioned. “We completely really feel betrayed and harm, and really feel that he used ladies and different survivors to get their vote.”
Cobb added that Bragg, “ran his whole marketing campaign on a lie, at a home violence survivor’s expense.”
Advocates at Survived and Punished NY, which works to finish the prosecution of home abuse survivors, have known as on Bragg to drop all the costs towards McCarter.
“District Legal professional Bragg goes to nice lengths to depict himself as pro-survivor, however his aggressive prosecution of Tracy has confirmed that to be a whole lie,” spokesperson SiobhanDingwall instructed The Submit Tuesday.
Whereas the workplace has beforehand supplied McCarter a deal to plea to a lesser cost, and filed the latest movement, which the defendant’s attorneys have been on board for, advocates accused Bragg of performing in dangerous religion.
Authorized consultants instructed The Submit there may be extra prosecutors might do in the event that they needed to really see McCarter’s case go away.
The DA’s Workplace might reconvene a grand jury and current the proof that was omitted the primary time, which could lead the jurors to determine to not cost McCarter, a authorized supply mentioned. It might additionally submit a “Dismissal on Advice,” or “DOR,” which judges typically grant.
Kiesel mentioned in her choice that Bragg’s workplace has supplied “no rationalization” for why they wish to downgrade the costs “past obscure references to ‘proof,’ ‘supplies,’ and ‘statements,’ none of that are hooked up to their movement as reveals.”
“They affirm, regardless of exhibit or documentation, that she is a survivor of home violence,” the decide mentioned of the DA’s filings about McCarter.
Dingwall, of Survived and Punished NY, mentioned the decide’s choice on the movement, “makes it clear that District Legal professional Bragg can’t have his cake and eat it too.”
“You can not ‘stand with survivors’ and prosecute them on the identical time.”
Bragg’s spokerspon Emily Tuttle mentioned, “the dignity and wellbeing of survivors is on the heart of the Workplace’s work.” She claimed that whereas the workplace can’t touch upon a pending case, the DA can’t drop the costs as a result of McCarter has already been indicted.
Eliza Orlins, a public defender who ran towards Bragg within the 2021 main, accused the DA’s Workplace of attempting to abdicate accountability.
“Clearly, in Tracy’s case, their filings have been completely unconvincing, and it’s not like they don’t know the best way to get an indictment dismissed … They know what it means to file a DOR,” she mentioned.
“The District Legal professional has absolute discretion over which circumstances they create, which circumstances they proceed, which circumstances they dismiss. They may at any time dismiss the case.”
McCarter’s sister Shana Cobb, mentioned that “Choose Kiesel’s ruling immediately additional proves that District Legal professional Bragg is speaking out of either side of his mouth.”
“His workplace’s failure to put in writing an appropriate movement solely reveals that the information of my sister’s case help a full dismissal of all fees,” she mentioned, referring to the decide noting inconsistencies within the prosecution’s argument. “How can the DA’s workplace simply go ahead on a homicide cost that they don’t even imagine?”
McCarter’s daughter Ariel Robbins had sturdy phrases for the left-wing Bragg too.
“He's the very injustice he ran towards,” she mentioned.
Further reporting by Elizabeth Rosner
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