Florida Department of Corrections photo of Richard Paey
Disabled Man Pardoned After Serving 4 Years On Drug Charge
POSTED: 8:09 am EDT September 21, 2007
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A disabled former attorney returned home Thursday after four years in prison, arriving hours after Gov. Charlie Crist and the rest of the state clemency board pardoned his drug trafficking charges. It ended a case that gained national attention as an example of outrageous mandatory minimum drug sentences.
Richard Paey, 48, had a broad smile as he exited the vehicle driven by prison officials to his Hudson home in Pasco County.
"In the immortal words of Dorothy...there's no place like home," Paey said, pausing in mid-sentence to kiss his wife Linda....
Richard Paey Granted Full Pardon (click on for Kathy's Place)
...Now I also want to say that when Jeb Bush was still Gov. of Fla. he was approached and refused, to do anything for this man. He had stated that a drug charge was a drug charge and he wasn't getting involved. When his daughter was arrested for drug fraud, did she get a mandatory 25 year prison sentence and a $500,000.00 fine? Did she have an MVA, a botched back surgery and have MS and was the drugs she was using, selling, stealing or whatever, actually prescription drugs that were only used for her own chronic pains? I hope when this next Presidential election is over, and we get GW Bush out of office, that we never elect another Bush to any Office ever again. One thing is for certain, there will never be another one to get my vote. Lord, I voted for GW in 2004. Here is what happened to Jeb Bush's daughter in the state of fla. when she was arrested, not once, but twice, on drug charges..
Noelle is the daughter of Florida governor Jeb Bush and his wife, Columba, and the niece of U.S. president George W. Bush. She has two brothers: George P. and John Jr. (known as Jebby). Noelle made news headlines on 29 January 2002 when she was arrested by Tallahassee police and charged with prescription fraud after she tried to buy the sedative Xanax at a local pharmacy. The case received extra attention because it echoed the 2001 arrests of Noelle Bush's cousins, Jenna & Barbara Bush, for underage drinking. In February 2002 Noelle Bush entered an Orlando drug treatment center. In July of 2002 she was jailed temporarily after she was found in possession of prescription pills, a violation of her court-ordered treatment plan. In September 2002 she was back in the news after police visited the drug treatment center and found Bush in possession of cocaine. She was sentenced 17 October 2002 to ten days in jail for violating the terms of her court-ordered drug treatment program.
I am truly happy for this man and his family. I only wonder where he is now going to find a doctor willing to treat his pain? He was being given far more pain medication in prison, that what he was in possession of during the time of his arrest. I hope this is something someone is helping him figure out.
TALLAHASSEE — Richard Paey is a chronic pain patient in year three of a 25-year mandatory-minimum sentence for trafficking in drugs — his own pain medication.
But his freedom is just hours away.
Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet voted unanimously to grant Paey a full pardon Thursday morning for his 2004 conviction on drug trafficking and possession charges....
Op-Ed Columnist
A Taste of His Own Medicine (click here)
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: May 6, 2006
Now that Rush Limbaugh has managed to keep himself out of prison, the punishment he once advocated for drug abusers, let me suggest a new cause for him: speaking out for people who can handle their OxyContin.
Like Limbaugh, Richard Paey suffers from back pain, which in his case is so severe that he's confined to a wheelchair. Also like Limbaugh, he was accused of illegally obtaining large quantities of painkillers. Although there was no evidence that either man sold drugs illegally, the authorities in Florida zealously pursued each of them for years.
Unlike Limbaugh, Paey went to prison. Now 47 years old, he's serving the third year of a 25-year term. His wife told me that when he heard how Limbaugh settled his case last week — by agreeing to pay $30,000 and submit to drug tests — Paey offered a simple explanation: "The wealthy and influential go to rehab, while the poor and powerless go to prison."
He has a point, although I don't think that's the crucial distinction between the cases. Paey stood up for his belief that patients in pain should be able to get the medicine they need. Limbaugh so far hasn't stood up for any consistent principle except his right to stay out of jail.
He has portrayed himself as the victim of a politically opportunistic prosecutor determined to bag a high-profile trophy, which is probably true. But that's standard operating procedure in the drug war supported by Limbaugh and his fellow conservatives.
Drug agents and prosecutors are desperate for headlines because they have so little else to show for their work. The drug war costs $35 billion per year and has yet to demonstrate any clear long-term benefits — precisely the kind of government boondoggle that conservatives like Limbaugh ought to view skeptically.
Yet conservatives go on giving more money and more power to the drug cops. When critics complained about threats to civil liberties in the Patriot Act, President Bush defended it by noting that the government was already using some of these powers against drug dealers. Why worry about snooping on foreign terrorists when we've already been doing it to Americans?
Limbaugh objected when prosecutors, unable to come up with enough evidence against him, demanded to be allowed to go through his medical records in the hope of finding something.
He managed to stop them in court, but other defendants can't afford long legal battles to protect their privacy.
Drug agents and prosecutors go on fishing expeditions to seize doctors' records and force pharmacists to divulge what they're selling to whom. With the help of new federal funds, states are compiling databases of the prescriptions being filled at pharmacies. Once their trolling finds something they deem suspicious, the authorities can threaten doctors, pharmacists and patients with financially crippling investigations and long jail sentences unless they cooperate by testifying against others or copping a plea.
Paey was the rare patient who refused to turn on his doctor or plead guilty to a problem he didn't have. He insisted that he'd been taking large quantities of painkillers because he needed them. He wanted to protect his own right to keep taking them, and others' rights as well.
"They say I was stubborn," he told me last year. "I consider it a matter of principle."
Limbaugh got off partly because he could afford the legal bills (which he says ran into millions of dollars) and partly because he cooperated with prosecutors. He confessed to being an addict, went into rehab and swore to remain clean.
Perhaps he really was one of the small minority of pain patients who hurt themselves by compulsively using drugs like OxyContin for emotional, not physical, relief. But most pain patients can become physically dependent on large doses of opioids without being what doctors consider an addict. They take the drugs not to escape reality, but to function normally.
Even if Limbaugh believes that drugs like OxyContin are a menace to himself, he ought to recognize that most patients are in Richard Paey's category. Their problem isn't abusing painkillers, but finding doctors to prescribe enough of them. And that gets harder every year because of the drug war promoted by conservatives like Limbaugh.
It has been said that a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. I wouldn't wish such a conversion on Limbaugh. But a two-year investigation by drug prosecutors should be enough to turn a conservative into a libertarian.
