The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office made a stunning admission Tuesday, saying it pursued just two of nearly two dozen separate cases against a serial shoplifter because it would have been “a waste of resources” to hit him with all the charges.
Ex-con Wilfredo Ocasio, who remains free despite his Nov. 16 arrest on 23 separate thefts, would only have to serve a maximum of two years behind bars under state law, even if he was charged with and convicted of all the raps, a spokesman for DA Alvin Bragg noted.
But while Bragg’s office contended that limiting the charges spared staff what they deemed to be unnecessary legal grunt work, legal experts told The Post that charging Ocasio, 44, with all 23 of the alleged thefts could have had ramifications beyond jail time for the repeat offender.
“It would be a waste of resources in the sense that it couldn’t result in any more jail time — but jail time is not the only consequence of a criminal conviction,” said defense attorney Samuel Coe, a former prosecutor and adjunct professor at Bloomfield College.
“The conviction itself can have other collateral consequences,” Coe said. “Just having 20 misdemeanors on your record versus two is a big deal.”
It could affect plea bargains in future cases, and “employers might look the other way with two convictions but not 20,” he noted.
“All that being said, I could understand a prosecutor putting their resources into other cases with more tangible consequences, implications.”
Ocasio’s name surfaced this week when NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey cited his case as an example of the state’s failed criminal justice and bail reforms on NY1.
But Coe, as well as a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, said that prosecutors could have asked a judge to hold Ocasio on bail — even though the petit larceny charges against him don’t qualify for bail individually under the state’s controversial 2019 criminal justice reforms.
A loophole in the reforms known as the “harm on harm” clause stipulates that a repeat offender who gets nabbed on a class-A misdemeanor or a felony while facing charges in another case can get held on bail if they represent “harm” to a person or property.
“Under the revised ‘harm-plus’ statute the court can fix bail for Mr. Ocasio as he has committed a number of crimes while out on the release that involved ‘harm to an identifiable property’ and certainly rises above the negligible threshold required by law,” said Todd Spodek, managing partner of Manhattan-based Spodek Law Group.
The Manhattan DA’s office made that same argument last month against Darin Mickens, a reputed and prolific pickpocket who was part of the NYPD’s “Nifty Fifty” deck of cards of the Big Apple’s most persistent transit recidivists.
The judge ruled against the office in that case and Mickens remained free.
But Bragg’s office contends that they don’t have grounds to make a similar motion in Ocasio’s case, in part because he had no pending case when he was last busted.
One legal expert agreed it would be a hard sell in Ocasio’s case.
“The ‘harm on harm’ pertains to crimes against individuals,” said noted criminal defense attorney Jason Goldman. “A string of petty larcenies against a Duane Reade won’t fall into that carve-out.”
Ocasio — who has served two stints in state prison on rape and robbery convictions — has been busted on petit-larceny charges 33 times since-mid August, including the Nov. 16 arrest for the 23 separate thefts from two Duane Reade stores in Manhattan.
“Oh, we know that name here,” one worker at the Duane Reade outlet on Broadway said of Ocasio on Tuesday.
An employee at another Duane Reade outlet on Wall Street told The Post when shown a photo of Ocasio, “I have seen him here several times.”
“They will just get away with everything,” another worker at the store said. “They will steal whatever on the shelf were not locked up. They find a way to do everything.”
Ocasio’s arrest came after another petit-larceny arrest Oct. 14, six charges on Oct. 11, two others on Sept. 30 and one more on Aug. 19, the sources said.
The DA’s Office said details on those cases are not available because they were disposed of or otherwise sealed.
Ocasio’s attorney declined to comment on his cases on Tuesday.
Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that he wants to continue to push state lawmakers to increase funding for prosecutors and tweak the controversial criminal justice reforms to hold recidivists more accountable.
“The criminal justice system is broken,” the mayor said during a City Hall press conference.
“I know bail reform is a buzz term, but I’ve been saying this over and over again,” he said. “The process is broken and we need to look at the entire process that includes giving judges the discretion with those with [an] imminent threat.
“They’re repeated offenders, and we have to start keeping dangerous people in jail.”
Additional reporting by Mingmei Li
