Charging into future
Longtime Brooklyn prosecutor to quit after 32 years
Professional boxers, self-proclaimed Satanists and runof-the mill crooks have all had their day in court in front of Wilfredo Cotto.
The longtime arraignments prosecutor has retired after three decades in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
With his signature bow tie, shaved head and white beard, Cotto, 67, was a hard-to-miss fixture in the court on Schermerhorn St., a public defender-turned-prosecutor who prided himself on working with defense attorneys as colleagues as opposed to adversaries.
“It’s not a win-lose situation for anyone,” he told the Daily News. “It’s not so adversarial that we don’t take the time to talk about what needs to be done so that fairness overrules the entire process.”
Cotto — who grew up in the Manhattanville Houses in Harlem alongside seven brothers and sisters — began his tenure at the Brooklyn district attorney’s Office in 1991, leaving his job as a staff attorney at Legal Aid.
He started at the public defender’s office as a prison legal assistant, visiting indigent clients every day at Rikers Island to discuss their cases. He left to become a prosecutor after a unique interview with then-District Attorney Charles Hynes.
“I went in and stood on soapbox and talked about how the DA’s office was oppressive and how they arrested people of color,” Cotto recalled. But the outburst didn’t stop Hynes from hiring the young lawyer.
A progressive prosecutor, Cotto supports the state’s bail reform laws — which made it so prosecutors cannot ask for bail in most misdemeanors and nonviolent felony cases. The law helps the criminal justice system treat Black and Brown defendants fairer, Cotto believes. “It’s long overdue. Long, long overdue,” he said. He noted that in Brooklyn, the DA’s office under Eric Gonzalez largely stopped asking for bail in misdemeanor cases before the law took effect in 2020.
Still, he said, a “major concern” in his job is public safety and making sure victims are protected and those who commit violent felony offenses are not allowed to hurt anyone else. Yet, he thinks it’s key to understand what situations led defendants to the courtroom. It’s a difficult balancing act. “It bothers me when I’m not taking into account all of the various things that might lead a person to commit a crime,” Cotto said.
He would often speak with defense attorneys before cases were heard, to let them know if the office would seek bail, and consider lawyers’ arguments as to why he should not.
“When I was in the Bronx, that was not done. When
I was at Legal Aid I don’t recall ever speaking to a prosecutor before arraigning a case,” said the Puerto-Rican born Muslim convert.
Prosecutors these days have more time to make those decisions than they used to, Cotto said. When he was handling arraignments in Brooklyn more than a decade ago, there might be 500 cases at any moment waiting to go before a judge, he said.
“Now if we’re looking at 120 people in the system everyone is running around like they’re busy,” he laughed. “The sheer number of people that were in the system, there’s no comparison.”
Cotto does not think of himself as retiring as a prosecutor or as a public defender.
“I just see myself as retiring,” he said. “From a system which I entered in hopes that I could make a difference. I hope that I have done that even in the smallest way.”