Tracy McCarter sues NYPD alleging false arrest of estranged husband

Home violence survivor Tracy McCarter filed a lawsuit in opposition to the NYPD final Thursday, Nov. 2 over how police investigated her estranged husband’s 2020 loss of life by which she was accused of homicide and manslaughter. These fees had been utterly tossed out final December and he or she’s now alleging {that a} false confession led to her speedy arrest and subsequent 205-day detainment on Rikers Island throughout “the terrifying early part” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The criticism alleges McCarter’s confession to stabbing James Murray was a “malicious lie” by an NYPD officer despatched to the scene which led to her prosecution. She maintains the loss of life was an accident. Murray, who struggled with dependancy, consumed alcohol in keeping with investigators and arrived at her Higher West Facet house demanding cash. McCarter says he stumbled onto the knife she held in self-defense and by no means informed police in any other case.

“I heard a police officer say that I mentioned [Murray] tried to take my purse so I stabbed him within the chest,” she mentioned. “And I bear in mind turning to somebody and saying, ‘Why do you retain saying that? I by no means mentioned that.’”

The dialog was documented by police physique digicam footage in keeping with the submitting, together with the open denial of a confession. McCarter hopes the lawsuit will function a lever of accountability for police, particularly for the officer she alleges claimed the false confession.

“What we additionally are attempting to do is maintain them accountable for these lies but in addition make it very clear how a lot these lies matter even when in the end the precise consequence occurs,” mentioned McCarter’s lawyer Tess Cohen. “How damaging these lies are even when the prison justice system involves the proper conclusion: the method is traumatic. The ending will not be the tip of this. And so we’re attempting to carry them accountable for the method as properly.”

After her arrest, McCarter couldn’t return to her job as a nurse or her superior medical administration and management curriculum research at Columbia College. Whereas each her employment and her enrollment remained on maintain, she stayed in administrative limbo as a consequence of digital monitoring and a scholar conduct suspension. McCarter missed the beginning of her grandchildren and the funeral of an aunt and a grandparent.

Cohen, who was additionally on McCarter’s protection group, factors to Daniel Penny, who was not instantly arrested and charged after the loss of life of unhoused Black New Yorker Jordan Neely. As an alternative, he was later charged with manslaughter and was launched on bail.

“He was not arrested [at] that second, nobody put cuffs on him [at] that second and so they might have made that very same alternative for Tracy,” she mentioned. “As a result of they selected to cuff her that night time and put ahead a story that she mentioned ‘he tried to take my purse and I stabbed him within the chest’. . . they formed the narrative in that second.

“That meant she was remanded when she was cuffed. She was charged with homicide. These first choices determine the entire of a case in plenty of conditions.”

McCarter acquired a groundswell of assist following her arrest, with greater than 20,000 supporters demanding her fees be dropped. The problem impacted the Manhattan District Lawyer’s race, with the eventual winner Alvin Bragg’s marketing campaign tweeting assist for McCarter.

Detailed within the lawsuit’s criticism are alleged cases of Murray abusing McCarter after relapsing into alcohol dependancy in late 2016, the identical 12 months the couple moved collectively in New Jersey. It recounts pushing, choking, punching, kicking and hair-pulling. The 2 remained collectively as McCarter was “hopeful that [Murray] would ultimately overcome his alcoholism.”

Whereas McCarter is way from the one criminalized home violence survivor, her case coincided with each the general public assist of pandemic-time medical staff and the racial reckoning of the George Floyd protests. Public assist naturally adopted for the Black nurse and 4 blue-chip personal legislation corporations quickly signed on to assist. Regardless of her ordeal, McCarter considers herself fortunate with reference to navigating the authorized prison justice system.

“The distinction is the caseload and the selection of those attorneys to take my case—what number of defendants get 4 legislation corporations which can be pretty properly funded to signify them?” mentioned McCarter. “Solely the richest amongst us and I don’t have these sorts of funds. I’d by no means have gotten the strong protection that I did, if it weren’t for attorneys coming ahead and doing this work professional bono and so it simply factors to how unsustainable the system is as a complete.

“As a result of if it takes this a lot useful resource[s], if it takes 1,000,000 greenback protection with the intention to get one so clearly harmless Black lady out of the jaws of the system, and it takes three years to try this even with all of these assets, the system is at all times going to be stacked in opposition to us and subsequently it might probably’t proceed to face the best way it’s. It’s not truthful.

“It completely can not occur that each one who didn’t commit against the law goes to garner this a lot press, this a lot consideration, this a lot group assist [and] this a lot authorized assist. It simply doesn’t occur. In order that’s why so many individuals take pleas, as a result of the system simply isn’t designed to really struggle for our innocence.”Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public security for the Amsterdam Information. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps hold him writing tales like this one; please take into account making a tax-deductible present of any quantity at the moment by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.