Drug War Issues
Politics & Advocacy
A Florida man serving a 25-year sentence as a drug dealer for attempting to obtain pain medications for his back injuries will be granted an expedited chance to appeal for clemency. Richard Paey, 48, has already served four years in Florida prisons for using undated prescription forms to obtain pain medications.
Inmates must typically serve at least a third of their sentences before being considered for clemency. But in the Paey case, which has received national attention, the state Clemency Board last week voted to grant a waiver. His case is scheduled to be voted on by the board next month.
Paey, a former lawyer and father of three, was observed going from pharmacy to pharmacy in his wheelchair seeking medications to relieve the pain from a 1985 auto accident that injured his back. Prosecutors argued that anyone forging prescriptions to obtain so many pain pills had to be selling them, but Paey said he had to use large amounts of opioid pain relievers to be able to function. Paey's pain is so severe that the Florida Department of Corrections has him on a morphine pump.
Paey appealed his conviction, but the Florida Supreme Court in March refused to hear his case. Now, clemency appears to be his best shot at regaining his freedom.
(The November Coalition has posted an important action alert about the case here.)
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Comments
Paey Clemency
I'm so thrilled to hear about Richard Paey's expedited chance to appeal for clemency. I wish him the best of luck and hope he regains the freedom he was so unjustly deprived.
As a fellow chronic pain sufferer, I know it takes a lot more medicine sometimes to control pain than what some DEA administrator or state prosecutor 'thinks' is is sufficient. My main purpose of joining the fight to stop the drug war is to get the DEA and law enforcement out of the medical arena, a place they have no business being in the first place.
Few if any are medically trained, the DEA has told doctors what limits they had to prescribe, then have changed the rules without warning, just to make some easy busts, agents have posed as patients suffering with chronic pain in order to gain a doctor''s confidence, then used the doctor's compassion to haul him off to prison. It's unjust, underhanded, and needs to be brought to the attention of the public and stopped.
The whole drug war is a bust, and needs to be abandoned or at least seriously restructured, but this facet of the war is hurting people who are already sufffering real, chronic, and intractable pain. It's causing doctors to undertreat or not treat those that need relief, and causing innocent chronic pain patients legal and emotional problems they certainly don't need.
Good luck Richard, may God be with you.
Pain Patients live in fear
As a chronic pain patient i live in fear of ever being arested for some offence and then not being able to take or get the medicine I need to control the pain , and then suffering over the weekend in Jail from withdral and pain that is beyond most people`s comprehencion. I spent 31/2 years laying in bed crying before i finally found a Doctor that would help me.
I don`t have much of a life now but atleast it`s a life now thanks to the medince i get now. I know the Richard needs to be out of prison , And have been praying for him for a long time now . Good luck, All it would take is for some of these high minded people to be put in almost any chronic pain sufferer`s shoes for a year or 2 to really understand how wrong these laws are. I went to 4 pain clinics and was told
how to control nerve pain without medication , Breathing just doesn`t cut it unless thatys the only thing your doing . It doesn`t work 24 7 365. The problem is that once your one of us you can`t figh the system because your nothing but a druggie! The fight to just keep my family in food and shelter is about all i can do , but I can vote Libertarian
Freedom for the soft
Freedom is not for the"soft".If you cannot stand the pain ,you may be soft. To be soft in Amerika is now a crime.Tolerate the pain or be called "soft = druggie". Doctors who are soft are also criminals.Remember,compassionless, zero tolerance, is the way to a drug free world. And a drugfree world is what freedom is all about these days, right? Prohibition is the gateway to tyranny!
He needs to sue!
He needs to sue the pants off everyone involved in his arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment. He should also seek to have criminal charges filed against same. I would love to see the prosecutor explain himself to a group of prisoners doing long sentences.
Add new comment