QUEENS, New York, Sept. 16, 2026. Shaquan Seth, 40, has been arrested nearly 150 times since 2009 and jailed 67 times. He was released without bail twice this summer within a span of ten weeks, each time for offenses allegedly committed within days of walking out of Rikers Island.
Seth's record includes convictions and arrests for larceny, robbery, drug possession, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer, according to the New York Post, which first reported the case in August. His most recent stretch at Rikers followed a November 2025 robbery and burglary arrest. In May 2026, he pleaded guilty to felony grand larceny under a plea deal carrying a six-month sentence, credited entirely against the five months he had already spent in pretrial detention. He left Rikers on June 11 owing the state no additional time.
He was back in custody within six days. On June 17, Seth allegedly committed the first of five thefts and burglaries across Queens that continued through Aug. 5, each falling under the category of nonviolent offense for which New York law forbids cash bail regardless of arrest history. A statute built to weigh every charge in isolation treated a sixth alleged theft in ten weeks exactly as it treated a first.
The clearest incident came on Aug. 5, when Seth allegedly took more than $600 in Threshold-brand candles from the Target on Jackson Avenue in Queens and left without paying. According to sources cited by the Post, he turned on an employee who intervened, threatening gun violence, though he never displayed a weapon. The Queens District Attorney's Office confirmed the charges were not bail-eligible under state law, and Seth was released again after his arraignment.
Twelve days later, on Aug. 17, Seth was arrested a third time, allegedly returning to the same store, from which he had already been banned, and taking roughly $800 in candles. He was charged with third-degree burglary and petty larceny, the Post reported. This time, prosecutors invoked a stipulation in state bail law known as harm on harm, which lets a judge set bail in an otherwise non-bail-eligible case when a defendant commits multiple offenses and causes harm to a person or property. Judge Jennifer Saint-Preux set bail at $10,000 cash or bond, after prosecutors had asked that he be held without bail. As of his most recent court appearance, records showed him still held at Rikers Island in a case that reached a judge's discretion only because prosecutors located a narrow statutory exception that applied to his pattern of offenses.
New York's bail statute produced this outcome by design. Five alleged thefts and a threat against a store clerk gave a judge no authority to intervene in Seth's case; only a narrow statutory exception, rarely invoked, finally did. The Preventable Crime Project's Judicial Performance Database tracks cases like Seth's, cataloguing how judges and prosecutors across the state handle repeat offenders.
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