My husband and his friend lived in Mass and they were both on probation. My husband also had an open case in Connecticut for failure to register

It sounds like your husband has an open warrant. If so, he will most likely go through this cycle over and over until he gets the open warrant removed. The warrant will remain open until a judge orders it removed. Until that happens, everytime a police officer runs a "wants and warrants" request on your husband, regardless of what state he is in or how many times this has happened in the past, he will go through the same process. This cycle could go on forever until he comes to MA and has the warrant removed and deals with the underlying issue. I have a page on my web site (www.lawworcester.com) dedicated to this issue; Open MA Warrants. I advice people to take a proactive approach and deal with this on their terms instead of the state's. I don't know what penalty he is facing, but I suspect it isn't that harsh since MA is not interested in coming to get him. He should hire an attorney here in MA to assist him with the charge as soon as he can afford to. He will have to pay for representation and be prepared to travel here to MA if necessary. I have handled many of these type of cases over the last few years especially since RMV computers have been set up to communicate these open warrants between states. What we try to do is to get the leg work done before the client actually returns to MA. The process goes like this... the person hires us, I then file an appearance and notify the court that I represent him, get the warrant removed and set a pre-trial conference (PTC) date. I then try to negotiate a resolution with the DA before the PTC. In some cases I have been able to get the disposition done without the client ever traveling to MA. In other cases, the client then comes to MA for one (1) day to get the disposition and fly home. Understand that if the charge is vulnerable to challenge, then it will complicate and lengthen the process.