Richard Paey and an Outrageous Ruling

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have been asked to put up something about Richard Paey's plight. As I was unfamiliar with it, I did some reading. What a crock! What a outrage! The Florida Appeals Court simply stated that it was not competent to reverse a miscarriage of justice:

Mr. Paey's argument about his sentences does not fall on deaf ears, but it falls on the wrong ears.

The court actually suggested that executive clemency be sought. This is the most shameful statement ever issued by a USA court for passing the buck that I am aware of.

Let's be clear. The Florida Appeals Court just stated that a man has been unjustly condemned by the USA justice system, that the court is awfully sorry to hear about this and it is a damn shame, but the court cannot do anything because of some technicality or other. So the best thing to do is to see if the Governor (Jeb Bush) will bend the rules.

The fact that an innocent man is in prison, and the court admits it, does not seem to carry much weight in the court's learned ponderations. Here are some articles for details.

Richard Paey's Appeal Denied

by Radley Balko

The Agitator

December 7, 2006

Pain Patients: Richard Paey Loses Appeal, Wheelchair-Bound Man to Remain in Prison

Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)

December 8, 2006

Cruel and Unusual: 25 Years for Taking Own Pain Meds

by Maia Szalavitz

The Huffington Times

December 7, 2006

Here is a quote from the last:

Richard Paey is a wheelchair-bound father of three young children.

He has no prior criminal record-- in fact, he's an Ivy League law school graduate. He has not one, but two extensively documented and excruciatingly painful chronic disorders: multiple sclerosis and chronic back pain due to an injury suffered in a car accident that was treated by a surgery that made matters worse. (This surgery was so egregiously misguided that TV exposes and numerous large malpractice judgments resulted). Paey has already been in prison for three long years.

In prison-- a place not exactly known for medical kindness-- he has been given a morphine pump, which now daily gives him similar or higher doses of medication than he was convicted of possessing illegally.

There is reason to be alarmed here.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Since I mentioned the case to you I would also add the Reason blog since it has the addresses to reach Jeb Bush. I would recommend the comments on Hit and Run. Even if you think Paey did something wrong in forging prescriptions the sentence is more than out of line. We can hope that Florida will end this vedette against this man. Write! Please!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Chris,

I remember you mentioning this. Here is the Reason blog report and comments:

Appeals Court Upholds Richard Paey's 25-Year Sentence

by Jacob Sullum

Hit and Run

December 7, 2006

Here is a quote from the report:

State Attorney Bernie McCabe suggested Paey's real crime was not prescription fraud but his stubbornness in turning down plea bargains. "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."

There are many comments expressing general outrage which I skimmed, but one jumped out at me with respect to the above quote:

At first I was pissed by these comments (I'm a prosecutor) until I read the decision and realized I would have charged the guy with prescription fraud, asked for probation, and that would have been that.

It's a shitty deal, that's for sure. I wasn't sold on the dissent until he pointed out how infuriating "loopholes" are to us. Well, its no different when we do it.

So, from what I gather, Paey's real crime was conflicting with some little-bitty power mongers within the system (starting with the drug enforcement officers). He was offered a plea bargain and refused it on principle, saying that he did nothing wrong. If he had accepted the plea offered, he would have had to sanction his accusers and state that he was in fact a criminal. So his choice was to accept being a minor criminal or a major criminal when his medical condition established his reality.

The pompous jerks like McCabe within the system taught him a lesson, for sure. Of course, justice had nothing to do with that lesson. What Paey learned is that pompous jerks like McCabe wield enough power to condemn an innocent man (and nobody should forget it, by God).

This is one clear-cut case where the government is not serving the people, but allowing a public servant to act as a whimsical tyrant instead. The appeals court cannot even find the words to condemn Paey in actual fact. The court admits that he is not a drug trafficker in fact, but is one under the law. It condemns him on a technicality, owning up to the fact that the law does not correspond to reality in defining what a drug trafficker is. And then the court does not have the moral courage or commitment to reason to rule against a severely inept law (in formal terms).

Unbelievable!

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This article, by former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury of the Reagan administration, is a very good account of what probably happened to Paey and why his plight is so weirdly irrational.

Apparently prosecutors need high success rates and these are attained by plea bargaining. When this is refused, they get ticked because it interferes with their ratings and they frame the suspect. Police officers also get high ratings on convicted criminals for their collars, so they collaborate in frames.

America’s Injustice System Is Criminal

by Paul Craig Roberts

Incidentally, here are some interesting statistics.

One of every 32 US adults is behind bars, on probation or on parole.

...

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries.

...

In the US the wrongful conviction rate is extremely high. One reason is that hardly any of the convicted have had a jury trial. No peers have heard the evidence against them and found them guilty. In the US criminal justice (sic) system, more than 95% of all felony cases are settled with a plea bargain.

This makes a very interesting idea for a novel.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

I wanted to do an update. Jeb Bush left office this week and did not do anything about Richard Paey. It is now up to Gov Crist. This continues to be disgusting. Is everyone in Florida insane?

Edited January 7, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[sjw]

I wanted to do an update. Jeb Bush left office this week and did not do anything about Richard Paey. It is now up to Gov Crist. This continues to be disgusting. Is everyone in Florida insane?

I wish this kind of thing were limited to Florida...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just left Florida. I was low risk for that kind of insanity anyway, but you never know. They could have started imagining clandestine messages on OL for drug traffickers or terrorists or something...

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; Have you forgotten Rush Limbaugh? Rush admitted he did prescription fraud and he could have been charged with the same charges. The seizure and inspection of his luggage and his not having a prescription for his Viagra almost got his probation revoked. I'm not going to Florida and North Carolina.