'84 Warrant Leads to Jail Cell

Youthful Theft of Hubcaps Comes Back to Haunt Md. Man

The Caribbean cruise ship docked at Port Canaveral, Fla., that morning, and Patrick and Bernadette Clerkin and their three children awoke tanned and relaxed and ready for their trip home to Maryland.

There was a knock at their cabin door. Patrick Clerkin, owner of a Brandywine roofing company, was about to take a shower, so his wife answered to find three U.S. customs agents.

Politely and almost apologetically, the agents announced that they were there to arrest Patrick Clerkin.

"This must be some kind of mistake," Bernadette Clerkin told herself as the children giggled at seeing their churchgoing father being led away.

It wasn't a mistake, and today, nearly three months later, Clerkin, 41, finds himself in a Florida jail still.

The charge dates back more than two decades to his less-than-glorious years as a hard-drinking teenager, when a police officer in Pensacola, Fla., arrested him for stealing a pair of hubcaps.

A Florida judge sentenced Clerkin, then 19, to three years' probation, the conditions of which included that he pay $363 in court costs and notify his probation officer if he moved.

Clerkin failed on both counts, which triggered a 1984 arrest warrant. Clerkin said he didn't know about that until the customs agents, who routinely review ship passenger lists, arrived at his Disney cruise ship cabin April 29 and charged him with violation of probation.

Escambia County Circuit Court Judge Jan Shackelford sentenced Clerkin last month to nine months in jail. His release date: Thanksgiving Day.

"It's like something came out of the past, from the grave, and wrapped itself around my throat," Clerkin said by telephone from the jail, where he wears an orange jumpsuit and is known as No. 158976.

Since his imprisonment, his roofing business has been inactive, and the family's savings are drying up without the income. The Clerkins say they may not be able to pay their daughter Cassie's $13,000 freshman tuition at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. They also have another daughter, Maggie, 16, and a son, Mike, 12.

"It seems so unfair," Clerkin said. "I understand I did wrong, I should pay a penalty, but the harshness seems so unreal. The state of Florida basically wants to ruin my entire life over something that happened 20 years ago."

Dennis M. Williams, director of the Escambia County jail, has taken notice of Clerkin's case, saying the 1,400-bed facility is already so crowded that he can hardly afford to take another inmate.

"If you were talking about a crime against persons or if you were talking about morality, then I think incarceration would be prudent," Williams said. "But we're talking about two hubcaps."