Earlier this week, Tracy McCarter appeared in a Manhattan court to learn whether a judge would dismiss the second-degree murder indictment against her, as her attorneys raised questions about the NYPD body camera footage tied to the case which they claim to tell a different story.
In March 2020, McCarter, a nurse at Weill-Cornell, was arrested for the death of her estranged husband, James Murray. The pair had been separated since July 2019 after Murray, who is white, had repeatedly kicked, struck, and choked McCarter, who is Black. By the time they separated, he had been in and out of rehab five times, though his drinking and violence had escalated.
According to court documents, Murray was drunk when he came to McCarter’s Upper West Side apartment after locking himself out of his Airbnb apartment. Once inside, the court documents say, he demanded money to buy more alcohol from McCarter. She was then attacked by Murray, according to court documents, and pushed against a mirror that nearly fell on them. McCarter allegedly picked up a knife and held it out in front of her to stop further assaults. But, according to the documents, Murray kept advancing towards her.
"The knife entered Mr. Murray’s upper right chest,” according to court documents. When the police arrived, McCarter was performing CPR. Murray was brought to the hospital, where he died.
At issue is whether McCarter, who her attorneys claim to be a victim of domestic violence, can claim self-defense against their abusive partner. The case has drawn the attention of Manhattan's next district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who initially announced his support of McCarter.
McCarter was arrested and held without bail for six months on Rikers Island despite the jail’s recurring COVID-19 outbreaks. Meanwhile, the pandemic shuttered all courtrooms, including grand jury hearings. It was not until September 2020 that prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office submitted McCarter’s case before a grand jury, which indicted her for second-degree murder and manslaughter. Two days later, McCarter was released to home confinement and electronic monitoring.
In 2021, McCarter’s attorneys filed several motions, including one to dismiss the indictment because Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Sara Sullivan had excluded McCarter’s statement to police that Murray had attacked her.
In another motion, they argued that one of the responding officers wrote in her police report that McCarter admitted to stabbing Murray. But a transcription of body cam footage from other responding officers, as reviewed by Gothamist, revealed that while several officers used the word “stabbed” while talking amongst themselves, McCarter herself is never heard uttering that word.
Nonetheless, in her applications for at least three search warrants on McCarter's home and electronic devices, Sullivan included one of the officer's statements that read “that she spoke to Tracey [sic] McCarter and Ms. McCarter stated in substance: ‘I let him stay the night, I tried to help him, he tried to take my purse, and I stabbed him in the chest.’”
But McCarter’s attorneys argue their client never made that statement. They also note that, when asked about the different wording on her applications for search warrants, Sullivan told two members of McCarter's defense team that she had to "refresh" the officer's memory.
This is not the first time that a prosecutor’s office has been accused of withholding exculpatory body cam footage. In October 2021, a Staten Island judge vacated Jason Serrano’s 2018 conviction, after body cam footage showed officers planting marijuana in Serrano's car, which led to his false arrest. Richmond County prosecutors did not turn the footage over to Serrano’s defense team until months after he pled guilty to avoid being sent to Rikers.
When asked for comment, the Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's Office forwarded Sullivan’s response, in which she argued that, because McCarter did not make the alleged statement during a police interrogation, the prosecutor was not obliged to introduce other facts that supported her defense.
READ MORE: After Six Months On Rikers, A Nurse Stands Accused Of Murder In A Case She Says Was Self-Defense
“Prosecutors have a case theory when they go into a courtroom,” explained Leigh Goodmark, law professor and director of the University of Maryland’s Gender Violence Clinic and author of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism. “It’s not surprising that they will only provide the information that is consistent with their case theory.”
She continued, “In Tracy’s case, because they believe she was not defending herself and that she stabbed her husband because he was trying to take her purse, evidence that shows something different—that she was afraid of him, that there was a history of violence, that she tried to help him after he was cut--all of that is inconsistent with their case theory that she was the aggressor and she intentionally wanted to harm him.”
Seventy-seven percent of women in jail have previously experienced partner violence, according to a 2012 study from the Justice Department.
On Monday, Judge Melissa Jackson stated that she was denying the motion to controvert, meaning that the search warrants were valid, and was still deciding on the motion to dismiss the indictment. She set McCarter’s next court date for January 14th, 2022.
By then, Vance will no longer be Manhattan’s district attorney. His successor, Bragg, had previously tweeted his support for McCarter, stating that abuse survivors should not be prosecuted for self-defense. The following year, he was more circumspect, telling The Intercept that he would carefully scrutinize domestic violence before deciding whether to prosecute.
Prosecutors, Goodmark reminded Gothamist, can decide to drop charges at any point prior to trial. Bragg’s office did not respond to request for comment.
In a previous statement to Gothamist, McCarter’s attorneys said “the self-defense issues here are glaring.” On Monday, McCarter’s legal team—Sean Hecker of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, Jacob Buchdahl of Susan Godfrey, Jeffrey Brown of Dechert and Tess Cohen of ZMO Law— wrote, “Ms. McCarter has yet to receive justice in her case. We remain hopeful that once all the facts are known, justice will prevail.”
All four of McCarter’s adult children attended Monday’s hearing.
“I was three months pregnant when my mom was arrested,” Ashley, who came from Texas, told Gothamist.
“My mom couldn’t be with me during my pregnancy. I gave birth while she was not charged, but confined to Rikers," Ashley said. "And now there is at least another two-month delay where my mom still cannot visit or help me out as a new mom of a now 15-month-old. We were hoping that there would be some sort of forward movement, so my mom can clear her name. Dragging this out traumatizes the entire family, not just my mom.”
