Jose Alba, the New York City bodega clerk who faced a murder charge for defending himself last summer, told House Republicans Monday that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg did not "investigate" his case fully and that police and prosecutors should "be aimed at people committing crime, not an innocent man like me."
Alba killed a man in self-defense in July 2022, after the assailant jumped a counter and assaulted him. Bragg’s office initially sought to bring murder charges against him before eventually dropping them.
Alba, in a statement read out by his lawyer, called out Bragg's office for holding him on high bail despite letting many violent criminals out free under Bragg's bail reform policy.
"They asked for bail even though so many people are being let go these days," said Alba, who spent a week in New York's Rikers Island jail on murder charges. "I couldn’t afford it."
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Monday in New York City to hear about the city’s skyrocketing crime. The city saw major crimes rise 22 percent last year. New York officials reportedly told Republicans to cancel the hearing, and C-SPAN refused to carry it live.
Republicans are probing Bragg and his office after this month’s arrest of Trump. Bragg is suing Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) to stop his subpoena of a former Bragg staffer who left the office over the Trump case. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on April 4.