Man spend Five Months in Jail unaware is bail was just of $2

This man bail cant even buy my lunch.  A Queens man spent nearly five months at Rikers Island prison, from November 2014 to April 2015, without knowing his bail was just $2, according to records and his lawyers.

41 year old Aitabdel Salem, who was acquitted of bail jumping at a Manhattan Supreme Court trial last week, had been jailed on $25,000 bail for attacking an NYPD cop who was arresting him for stealing a coat at a Zara store in the Flatiron District on Nov. 21, 2014, court papers show.

Although Salem didn’t know it for more than four months, he caught a lucky break when prosecutors could not get an indictment. He was ordered released on Nov. 28, 2014 on the police assault arrest.

But he still had dollar bails set on each of two minor offenses — that included tampering and mischief charges — so he could not have been freed without first paying the tiny amount.

Judges sometimes set a dollar bail on a defendant’s subsequent charges if they believe the person’s existing bail is sufficient or if the defendant is ineligible for release for another reason, like an immigration hold.

Salem was left with just the dollar bail holding him in — but the fluke was not revealed to the Algerian native until several months later, his lawyers say.

Glenn Hardy and Theodore Goldbergh, Salem’s new attorneys, argued that their client could not be to blame for something he didn’t know. A letter with the new date to the address it had on record for Salem was stamped “Returned to Sender” by the post office.

“You can’t do what you don’t know and if you’re a defendant in a criminal case you certainly have a right to rely upon the system what your next court date is,” Goldbergh argued in his summation.

Salem remains locked up because his bail in the Zara case was raised to $30,000 after he missed his court date. He also faces tampering and mischief charges for disabling the cash slot of a MetroCard machine twice at the 116th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd. subway station in 2014.

“(Salem) was shocked and dismayed and frustrated that his case was unconscionably mishandled and there was no communication by his attorney telling him his bail was $2 which he could have made at any moment,” said Hardy.

Man spend Five Months in Jail unaware is bail was just of $2 bail