Court Rejects Disabled Man’s Appeal in Prescription Drug Case
Dec 7, 2006
Author Unknown
The International Herald Tribune (NY)
A man who said he obtained vast amounts of prescription drugs to control severe pain is a drug trafficker and has to serve a minimum 25-year prison sentence, an appeals court ruled.
But in an unusual decision issued Wednesday, the court expressed sympathy for Richard Paey, 48, and suggested he ask Florida Governor Jeb Bush to commute his sentence.
Paey’s argument that he does not deserve the long sentence “does not fall on deaf ears, but it falls on the wrong ears,” the appellate court said.
Paey’s story gained widespread attention in the United States after it was featured in national media earlier this year.
Advocates for chronic pain sufferers said the case illustrates flaws in the law and how people who are dependent on strong pain medication can get tangled up in the government’s overzealous war on drugs.
Paey’s attorney, John Flannery, said Thursday he immediately wrote to Bush’s office about the case.
Bush spokesman Anthony DeLuise said the office has received more than 100 letters on Paey’s behalf but has not yet received any official clemency request.
Paey, a former attorney and father of three who uses a wheelchair, suffered a serious back injury in a 1985 car accident and later was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He said nothing blunted the pain except large amounts of strong narcotics like Percocet and Vicodin.
Prosecutors said he was forging prescriptions and getting so many pills that he had to be selling them, even though investigators’ two-month surveillance found no evidence of trafficking.
Paey said that because doctors in Florida were reluctant to prescribe medication in the amounts he required, he got his former doctor in New Jersey to send him undated prescriptions he could fill here.
A jury convicted Paey in 2004 of 15 counts of prescription forgery, unlawful possession of a controlled substance and drug trafficking. The judge imposed the minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years.
In a dissenting opinion, Associate Judge James H. Seals took issue with Paey’s prosecution.
“Instead of recognizing the real problem and the real behaviors that led to his real crimes and holding him appropriately accountable, the State decided to bring out the artillery designed to bring down the drug cartels,” Seals wrote.
State Attorney Bernie McCabe said Thursday that he had made multiple plea offers to Paey that did not involve him going to prison. Paey rejected every one because he thought he would win at trial.
“He made his own bed here as far as I’m concerned,” McCabe said. “People can try to couch it some other way all they want, but that’s the way it is.”
Paey’s wife said he had rejected the pretrial plea offers because he didn’t want to be branded a drug trafficker.
Flannery said he will challenge the appeals ruling if the governor’s office does not provide relief.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/07/
america/NA_GEN_US_Drug_Sentence.php
