By: John P. Flannery, Counsel for Richard Paey
Painreliefnetwork.org
It appears that late Friday the Supreme Court listed on its website that Richard Paey's request that the Supreme Court hear his case was denied.
At this writing, I do not have any decision or order.
I received a call to this effect late Friday night, asking after the significance of that posting on the court's web site, stating that the case was now "closed."
So this is all the information I have.
It strikes me as cowardly that a court would designate a case as newsworthy and then in the late of night on a friday close the case without apparent explanation.
But then this case has seen a lot of this.
Obviously, we shall renew our efforts to obtain clemency from the Governor of Florida.
Otherwise, we shall have to consider whether to seek relief from the US Supreme Court.
Needless to say, this latest decision is quite disheartening, the manner in which it was announced and of course the denial itself.
The Court of appeals had reached an extraordinary decision among themselves that the result of confining Richard Paey in prison for 25 years when he was only taking medicine necessary to his pain was unjust, particularly when the prison continued to give him such pain medication. This decision was the basis of our appeal.
Two appellate judges said that it wasn't that his argument for relief fell upon deaf ears, but that it fell upon the "wrong ears", meaning that his relief would have to come from a clemency petition to the governor.
A third judge said that the court could render him the relief as the punishment was cruel and unusual and for that reason should be vacated.
On behalf of Richard, we filed a petition for clemency with the governor invoking the appellate court's own words.
In recognition of the dissenting judge's ruling, we asked the Supreme Court of Florida to consider adopting the ruling favoring Richard.
Apparently, the Supreme Court rejected this last argument.
We will not know the basis of that ruling until we read any order or decision that they may have entered.
If anyone has seen that order, please let us know.
We have had no communication from the Court, by phone, mail, fax or e-mail as to its decision.
The reporter who called wasn't certain himself that this denial was the result.
We will keep everyone apprised of developments but for now, we ask that anyone who cares about Richard's terrible circumstance and the injustice of this 25 year sentence to write to the Governor and to ask him to use his clemency powers to right this wrong.
Clemency may be the only thing that saves Richard from prison and reunites him with his loving wife and children.
THIS IS THE SUPREME COURT DOCKET SHEET WITH ITS NOTATION REFLECTING THE DENIAL ….
Supreme Court docket sheet - excerpt….
http://jweb.flcourts.org/pls/docket/ds_docket?p_
caseyear=2007&p_casenumber=38
