The lawyers for a Rikers Island inmate who is currently being held on $30,000 bail for missing a court date, believe they have plenty of reason to fault the dysfunction of the criminal justice system for his blunder; citing a period of five months prison time he once served for failing to post bail that they say he was never informed would only cost him $2.

Attorneys Glenn Hardy and Theodore Goldbergh are defending 41-year-old Aitabdel Salem's missed arraignment on May 13, 2015 by claiming that there was no way he could have even known about the date considering the letter sent out to inform him was returned stamped "return to sender", due to the fact that it had been sent to an old address on file. The Algerian immigrant still remains behind bars because of his inability to the five digit sum, but in a Daily News exclusive the failure on the courts behalf to make sure Salem was properly notified, brings up recollection of all of the days between November 2014 and April 2015 in which he remained in prison on charges that had been dropped.

As the story goes, Salem was detained in 2014 due to a police officer's allegations that he was assaulted by the Queens resident while placing him under arrest for shoplifting. But after a week in jail prosecutors were unable to indict him, thus dropping the $25,000 bail that had been set for him at the time. Salem remained in prison though because while the assault charge didn't hold, he still faced a minor tampering offence along with a minor mischief charge; each of which only kept him in custody pending $1 bail. Because his lawyer at the time, Stephen Pokart, never informed him that his amount of bail had subsequently changed, he remained in prison for nearly five months under the assumption that he couldn't make bail.

“(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,” his [new] lawyer Glenn Hardy said while grilling [old lawyer] Pokart, who was present to testify per Salem's missed court date [May 13, 2015]. Hardy blames Pokart not only for the unnecessary time Salem did, but for the mailing blunder they say he was in no position to resolve, having come home with no knowledge of the new arraignment date he is accused of skipping. One can only assume that had he bailed out immediately after the initial bail was dropped to a couple of bucks, that he likely would have been in a position to receive notification.

“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,” Salem's second [current] attorney Theodore Goldbergh argued.

Source: nydailynews.com