socket.bind

[sashan]

I'm writing a program using sockets. I'm binding to a port like this:
	
PORT = 5000              # Arbitrary non-privileged port
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen(1)

Now sometimes the rest of the program crashes later for whatever reason. 
As a result this leaves a socket bound to port 5000. When I try to run 
my program again it crashes at

s.bind((HOST, PORT))

saying that the port is still in use. How do I unbind that port? I've 
killed the previous program using the system monitor in Gnome.