Light at the End of the Tunnel?
Author Unknown
My Fox Tampa Bay (FL)
NEW PORT RICHEY - A Pasco County family's nightmare may finally be ending. They're a step closer to clemency for a man doing 25 years in prison because his indescribable pain required more drugs than state law allows.
Yet, ironically, in prison, he's getting more medication than he was convicted of using on the outside.
Critics say Richard Paey's is a story about prescription drugs, painkillers, and how they're turning ordinary folks, ravaged by pain, into criminals.
Paey, an attorney crippled by a car accident, torn by multiple sclerosis, and ripped from his young family by the war on drugs was convicted of trafficking - not because he sold drugs - but because he had 3 and a half grams of Oxycodone that he used to blunt his constant pain.
"Richard Paey is a victim of the well intentioned, but ineffective drug war," offered drug expert Terry Groski.
Groski believes the laws need to be changed to give judges discretion in pain management cases like Paey's.
"If you become a pain patient, if you become seriously disabled, who do you want to control your medication? Your doctor or a drug enforcement agent?" he asked.
Clutching a letter from the Florida Clemency board, Paey's wife Linda says it's the only good news the family has had in over 5 years.
The letter says Paey has been put ahead of 400 other inmates seeking waivers to state rules that block clemency hearings until one third of the sentence has been served. If the waiver is granted by the Governor and his cabinet, Paey could get a hearing by years' end.
It's also got the ring of finality for Paey's family, they've given up a federal appeal in hopes Governor Charlie Crist, and the cabinet, will release Paey.
Fighting back tears, Linda Paey said "it's scary because you don't know what's going to happen if this falls through. You know it will be extremely difficult on him, and us, because this is one of our last hopes that he'll get out."
It's a last hope largely in the Governor's hands.
Said Charlie Crist of Paey's case: "It's always important to be open minded to review those kinds of cases when people have had their rights abridged. It's important to give them relief as quickly as possible."
The Paeys have three young children.
"I tell my kids that it looks very hopeful. I don't tell them that if this doesn't come through then he's in there for 25 years," said Linda.
Paey's family is asking the public to write the Governor and the Cabinet with personal appeals.
A clemency hearing is expected later this year.
