In a remarkable courtroom scene, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked a New York judge Monday to dismiss murder charges against Tracy McCarter, who says she acted in self-defense when her estranged husband died from a stab wound in the chest in 2020. Bragg campaigned on a promise to fight to free McCarter of murder charges, though, when elected, advocates say his actions initially fell short. This comes as pressure is growing in New York to end the criminalization of domestic abuse survivors, which happens at a disproportionate rate against Black women. Advocates say 90% of women who are incarcerated in New York have been subjected to domestic violence. McCarter “had done everything we tell domestic abuse survivors to do,” says journalist Victoria Law, who has closely followed McCarter’s case, but the nurse still finds herself “in legal limbo, waiting to see if she can try to start picking up the pieces of her life or if she will be facing trial for murder.”
So, as you said, Tracy McCarter was arrested on March 2nd, 2020, a few weeks before New York went on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. She had done everything that we tell domestic violence survivors to do. She separated herself from her increasingly abusive husband. She moved out. She found her own apartment. She continued working as a nurse — and I
— source democracynow.org | Nov 29, 2022