Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic Leads Charge in Getting Justice for Domestic Violence Survivors

McCoy told her story this spring at a Brooklyn Law School panel discussion and screening of a documentary about the history of the DVSJA titled Beyond Survival. “My lawyer either didn’t want to familiarize himself with the law or he wasn’t seeing me as a human being who had a life, just as a definite defendant,” she said. “Then Kate came along.” 

 “Kate” was Professor Kate Mogulescu, the director of the Criminal Defense and Advocacy Clinic (CDAC) and cofounder of the Survivors Justice Project (SJP), which partnered with the clinic in taking on the very first cases to help survivors throughout the state receive reduced sentences through DVSJA. This work, Mogulescu said, has required not just legal finesse but also the difficult task of working with survivors to reframe the narrative about them, because while society views eradicating domestic violence as a positive goal, perceptions often shift when a victim becomes an offender.  

“All of the rhetoric about how we care about victims and how domestic violence is so bad falls by the wayside when those victims become a person who has committed an offense. And there’s no nuance,” Mogulescu said. “Our legal system largely doesn’t allow for nuance, except now, this law provides a small window to reconsider what happens to people who have, in some cases, caused real harm, oftentimes to someone that they love.”  

Survivor Stories 
 
What has been unique about the DVSJA since its enaction in 2019 is its nuanced viewpoint and the concept that being a victim can prompt someone to cause harm. In legal proceedings, a criminal act is dissected as a singular, discrete incident, but for domestic violence survivors who end up incarcerated, this is like opening a book to the middle and reading one chapter without absorbing all the twists and turns of the preceding pages. Those fuller details are explored in Beyond Survival, which looks at the history of DVSJA, and tells the stories of four survivors, each of whom worked with CDAC to get their sentences reduced.  

Survivors can live in fear that is exacerbated when they try to get away from an abuser. McCoy describes how her abusive, estranged husband started following her after he was released from prison. She let him back into her life after deciding that when he inevitably attacked her, she would rather face him head-on versus opening herself up to a surprise attack.  

McCoy and many others are now out of prison with help from the clinic: McCoy received a sentence reduction under the DVSJA in 2023. Along with other survivors of long-term incarceration and domestic violence, McCoy works for the Survivors Justice Project as an outreach specialist, helping other survivors seek DVSJA relief. The assistance is very much needed, as the cases are difficult for survivors to bring forth, both logistically and emotionally.  

“There have been some beautiful moments where people serving extreme prison sentences find some recognition, some healing in the process,” Mogulescu said. “There are also times when our legal system rips apart survivors who are trying to use and access the law.”  

 
“How Do We Show It, How Do We Prove It?”
 
The clinic has worked on more than two dozen DVSJA cases since its enactment. Its strong network of currently and formerly incarcerated people has allowed the clinic to cover more ground geographically than defender organizations that are restricted by jurisdiction.  

Nicholas Biblis ’25, joined CDAC in the spring of 2024 to gain practical experience and for the opportunity to work on the DVSJA, which is already serving as a model for other states. “It has been exciting because New York is ahead of the curve on this,” Biblis said. This past spring semester, Biblis worked with two incarcerated clients: one who was seeking resentencing under the DVSJA, while the other was filing an appellate brief to challenge a DVSJA petition that was denied. “We’re getting the first cracks at attempting to change how the New York State court system will interpret part of the law, and if we’re successful, it will be a really big deal,” Biblis said. 

Through the Survivors Justice Project, students field 10 to 15 letters each month from incarcerated people seeking relief through the DVJSA, and they respond to each one. 

“Students try to look and understand, where this person is situated. What is their DVSJA eligibility? What can we provide them?” Mogulescu said. “When the clinic represents someone, the students are in the lead, which means they are working alongside a survivor in prison, communicating with that person and their family members. They are investigating the case: not just learning what occurred in the actual offense, but why. They're exploring the circumstances of the person’s life, determining what abuse they had endured prior to committing this offense, and then, how do we show it, how do we prove it?”  

One student hard at work on that has been Hannah Abuaita ’25, who developed a passion for defense work as an undergraduate intern handling pro bono public defense work. She joined CDAC in the spring of 2024 and continued as an advanced student in the two semesters since.   

“When I came to law school, being in criminal defense was all that I wanted to do, and the clinic opened me up to doing that,” Abuaita said. A highlight has been meeting with clients, including in visits to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, the maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, to discuss DVSJA applications. The students treat the clients as partners.  

“It has been really important to be face-to-face or on the phone, communicating what we’ve been doing, what we’ve been writing, making sure they have copies of everything we’ve written in one of these motions, whether it’s an affirmation, affidavit, or memo of law,” Abuaita said. “If there’s something personal that they don’t want included, we give them the autonomy to say, ‘I don’t want this in there.’” 

Madison Miraglia ’26, who joined CDAC in the fall, said that to prepare for these client meetings, students did simulation exercises in which they practiced discussing the law, how it works, and when it applies. The actual meetings are also about getting to know one another: students and clients discuss hobbies, books, and ask about children or grandchildren. But inevitably the conversations turn toward trauma.  

 “A lot of survivors don’t recognize that they are survivors, and then a lot of those who do identify as survivors don’t realize that it would be relevant at trial, if they have already been told they did not act in self-defense,” Miraglia said.  

Interacting with clients, sometimes for the first time, is one of the most valuable parts of the clinic for students, regardless of what type of lawyer they become. “They have to manage difficult conversations and explore very personal and sensitive topics with care and with intentionality. This is absolutely a transferable skill,” Mogulescu said. “For many students it is their first opportunity to look outside of a law book and see both the real-world impact of the law and its potential.”  

Records, Research, and Interviews  

In addition to the client interactions, students need to prepare applications and create the pleadings or filings through which they will ask the court to re-sentence a survivor. They complete extensive research, combing through police and court records and medical and mental health records to build a case for each client. They also conduct primary research through interviews with witnesses, or experts such as doctors, mental health and postpartum disorder experts, and forensic psychologists.  

Miraglia said she and the team have read through original trial transcripts that were 2,000 pages long, and filed Freedom of Information Law requests to access documents that were not publicly available to help bolster their applications.  
 
When the filings are ready, students also meet with the District Attorney’s office that prosecuted their client to share their plans of utilizing the DVSJA. Finally, they go to the sentencing judge to make their case. 
 
Now in her third semester in CDAC, Alena Wertalik ’25 said the DVSJA is revolutionary in that it allows someone to be offender and victim at the same time, but it can still be hard for survivors to access relief because of the way the law is structured. “The burden is on them to prove that their abuse was a significant contributing factor to their offense, and that often requires evidence that can be difficult, or impossible, to obtain,” Wertalik said. 

For Wertalik, the client interactions she has experienced through the clinic have been particularly satisfying. As a director of yoga teacher training for nearly 10 years, Wertalik noticed that it was not uncommon for previously incarcerated individuals to sign up for yoga teacher trainings “looking to expand on the spiritual journey” they embarked on while serving their sentence.  

“While there have been a lot of powerful moments with our client, from initially reading her letter to our first trip to Bedford, to getting to know her and building relationships with her friends and family, each step has reaffirmed that all of these cases are about real people,” Wertalik said. “I think that’s something that often gets lost in media narratives and in legal arguments, because that's when people are often reduced to their worst moments, and the reality is a lot more complex.” 

Passion Drives the DVSJA Work 

One thing that each of the students says has made a difference in their clinic work is having Mogulescu as a professor, and that recognition has gone beyond the school community. In 2023, Mogulescu won the Shanara Gilbert Award, which is given to an emerging clinical professor by the Association of American Law Schools Section on Clinical Legal Section.  

Miraglia first encountered the professor when Mogulescu was a faculty speaker at Admitted Students Day. Miraglia was already interested in public service work. Hearing from Mogulescu, she said, was a “huge influence in my decision to go to Brooklyn Law School.”  

“She was so passionate about the work and was one of the first people working on this new law. That really spoke to me,” Miraglia said. Wertalik had a similar reaction. “I went to a clinic information session and then a mini session with Kate, and knew I wanted to work with her in particular,” Wertalik said. “You don't hear her say, ‘We can’t do this. We can't do that.’ She shows up for every single one of her clients, and she's just truly admirable. I call her Superwoman,” Abuaita said. 

The work certainly requires one. The number of people who may be eligible for relief under DVSJA is unknown, but those in the field believe it is substantial, and the letters to the clinic keep pouring in.  

“We know the rates are high. We know that people who are in prison overwhelmingly have experienced abuse, whether it's intimate partner or other family violence, but to the degree that it would allow them to use the DVJSA, we don't know,” Mogulescu said.   

To decide which cases to take is difficult, but often the clinic will choose a county in the state of New York where there have not yet been any DVSJA cases to help familiarize judges and district attorneys with the law. The goal is, in part, to educate judges about the new law.  

“We want to do it right, and open the door,” Mogulescu said. “I’m bragging about the students, and not me—the judges are so impressed with our pleadings and with what we put together, how we compile the information about the people we are working with and what they have gone through. Our work has become a model. Our hope is the next time the court or the county gets a case, there is a better understanding.”