Ben Paquin is among the thousands of Georgians who got a break when the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that judges could no longer put a hold on misdemeanor probation cases.
Paquin just found out this year, when he was signing up to work as a volunteer firefighter in his hometown, that a warrant had been taken out against him about a decade ago in Statesboro, where he had attended college. It popped up as part of a background check that was required to join the fire department.
Paquin was shocked. He said he had been in court since 2004 and no warrant had ever been mentioned.
“I said, ‘Honestly, that has got to be a mistake,’ ” he said.
Paquin called Statesboro and found out the warrant was tied to a failure to complete probation on a misdemeanor possession of marijuana case. He was a young college kid at the time, and he acknowledged he didn’t always make the best choices. But he said he’s been on the straight and narrow for years now and wanted to fix it, if the case was actually valid.
He said he called the private probation company in Stateboro and was told he would have to pay $1,900.
None of it felt right: the amount they said he owed, the fact that he’d heard nothing about this over the years and that it was a private company, not a government office, that was holding all the cards.
“The thing is, they’re not a state operation,” Paquin said. “They’re just some company like Wal-Mart or something. It’s one thing for there to be no statute of limitations when it’s a county, but it’s another thing when it’s a third party contractor.”
He was told getting all the documents might be tough on such an old case. Worried about clearing his name, he reached out to Augusta attorney Jack Long to try to figure out what his options were. But he didn’t have to fight it, due to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case brought by Long. The judge at Stateboro’s municipal court confirmed that he had dismissed Paquin’s case this week as a result of the Supreme Court decision.
“An incredible weight is lifted off my shoulders,” Paquin said.
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