Rush Remains Free and Richard Paey gets 25 years

Do any of you think Rush will actually get ANY jail time, much less 25 YEARS as this MS patient with severe back pain (father of three)has? He will probably die in prison. THE WHOLE WORLD'S GONE CRAZY.

from DRCNET:
Florida Pain Patient Sentenced to 25 Years 4/23/04 A wheelchair-bound
Richard
Paey was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Florida judge on April
16.
Paey, who was convicted of forging prescriptions for pills to ease
chronic,
severe
back pain dating from failed surgeries after an auto accident in 1985,
was
sentenced under Florida law as a drug dealer -- though even prosecutors
conceded
there is no evidence he did anything other than consume the medicine
himself
(http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/332/paey.shtml).

Paey's sentencing came as Florida endures a bout of prescription pain
pill
abuse hysteria, marked by the continuing legal and media odyssey of an
Oxycontin-gobbling Rush Limbaugh and a sensational series of
ill-reported
stories in
the Orlando Sentinel
(http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n318/a09.html?56410).
Taking full advantage of the media frenzy is the Florida drug control
establishment, led by Citrus State "drug czar" James McDonough, head of
the
governor's
Office of Drug Control. Since last fall, McDonough and Florida
Republican
legislators have been pressing a bill that would enact a prescription
monitoring
system, and that bill is now near passage.

Richard Paey is a desperately sick man who took desperate measures to
ease
his pain: Florida police and DEA agents who followed him for months
described
him wheeling himself into one pharmacy after another and leaving
clutching
his
bags of pain pills. But that didn't matter to prosecutors who tried him
as a
drug trafficker three times before they could win a conviction that
would
send
him to prison for years.

"It's unfortunate that anybody has to go to prison, but he's got no one
to
blame but Richard Paey," Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis told
the St.
Petersburg Times after sentencing. "Even if he possessed one pill
illegally,
it's
a crime. All we wanted to do was get him help and get him treated to
ensure
that he's not doing anything criminal," he added.

Paey and prosecutors wrestled over possible plea bargains as the third
trial
neared, but Paey ultimately decided to reject a deal that would require
him
to
plead guilty to a crime. He simply didn't believe he was anything other
than
a victim of a medical system hijacked by the imperatives of the war on
drugs.

It was a gamble that almost paid off. One juror, Dwayne Hillis, told
the
Times he did not want to vote to convict Paey, but relented after he
was
assured
by the jury foreman that Paey would receive probation. "It's my fault,"
said
Hillis, a 42-year-old landscaper from Hudson. "Basically I should have
stuck
it
out."

Hillis was misinformed by the foreman. Paey was convicted of
"trafficking"
in
more than 28 grams -- less than one 100-pill prescription -- of
Percocet, a
medicine containing 1.5% oxycodone. Under Florida law, he faced a
mandatory
minimum 25-year prison sentence and $500,000 fine.

"They compromised," Paey said after the verdict, "and in the field of
justice, compromises lead to horrible injustice."

"I said, "Guilty. Put it on the (verdict). I hope you all can live with
yourselves,'" Hillis recalled. "I just hate myself for what I did."

At the hearing, sentencing Circuit Judge Daniel Diskey expressed dismay
at
having to impose the harsh sentence, but ultimately washed his hands of
the
matter. Responding to a comment from a Paey defense attorney that the
legislature
needed to change the law, Judge Diskey said, "You read my mind. In 22
years
of
practicing law... I have watched the trial court's discretion in
sentencing
eroding away." Legislative guidelines have "virtually eliminated
judicial
discretion," he added. But Judge Diskey ultimately played his appointed
role. "It
should come as no surprise that I am going to follow the law," he said
just
before imposing sentence.

"Look what happens when prosecutors know that the defendant was a
patient in
pain and had no intent to sell the medicines. This madness must be
stopped,"
said Siobhan Reynolds, head of the Pain Relief Network (
http://www.painreliefnetwork.org), a group supporting the right of pain
patients and the physicians
who prescribe for them to be treated with dignity and compassion.
"Richard
V.
Paey has been a victim of advanced multiple sclerosis and a botched
back
surgery, and on April 16, Paey became another victim of overzealous
prosecution of
pain patients and mandatory minimums," said Reynolds, who attended the
sentencing.

"Paey, in his wheelchair with a morphine pump sewn into his ruined
back,
will
live out what for him is a death sentence in a Florida prison for
possessing
the medicine that he requires to survive," Reynolds noted. "He needs
air
conditioning in order to survive the summer, but Florida's prison
system
does not
provide it. This is an absolute travesty."

Two weeks ago, Paey's wife Linda told Drug War Chronicle she expected
him to
serve less than a year before winning on appeal. Now, if he can only
hold
out
that long.

You can keep up with the pain wars on a daily basis by tuning in to
PRN's
new
blog, -- visit http://www.painreliefnetwork.org and click on "Pain War
Chronicles" to check it out.

Obviously in pain, and he gets 25 years?

Rush takes his to get high, and he gets... what? Rehab at a country club?

Repukes sicken me. Really, they do.

The "Drug War" is really to blame here, and the draconian mandatory minimums, Not to mention the relative silence of the average American. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

The Drug War is a war on the sick, poor, and dying. It MUST end.

prison is obviously the place for him :sarcasm:

Letter from his wife:

http://www.mapinc.org/letters/2002/08/lte199.html

Here is another letter from her, written after the decision:

http://www.mapinc.org/letters/2004/04/lte34.html

get a promotion.

In this country we are under the impression that every problem can be solved in court.

Fucking Florida fascists!

Thanks, Rush! You get off scott-free while the rest of us have to beg to get a bottle of codeine. Yeah, it is a travesty. The judges need to come to their damn senses.

"Hillis was misinformed by the foreman". I wonder who misinformed the foreman of the jury, huh?

The foreman is either a PRICK, or he was intentionally told something false by the prosecution.

I wonder if this could be grounds for an appeal?

They already had the power of discretion, regarding choosing what cases to pursue and what ones to drop, and what specific charges to file in any given case, which I'm not objecting to because it is what their job is about.

I think judges should be able to sentence people on an individual basis, except in first degree murder cases. This defendant should have gotten probation and community service time, or a suspended minimum sentence and the judge should have had the discretionary power to give that sentence. We need our jail cells for the violent and dangerous.

Throwing out mandatory minimums for drug violations would be a start.

I wonder how Rush feels about this man.

Ten to one says, even after his own hypocracy was exposed, he would pontificate at length about why this man should be jailed.

These people are that full of shit.

I have chronic pain, and it is a degenerative condition.

Yet I live completely without pain medications simply because of a misdiagnosis of chemical dependancy as a youth.

I was young and out of control.

But the system recognized a symtom, and completely ignored the cause.

ie. I was in terrible pain, not physicaly, from incedents that stem from my childhood.

Finaly I met the right person who helped me through me issues, and the supposed 'chemical dependancy' I was diagnosed with dissapeared.

And yet I have been made painfuly aware that this misdiagnosis, by incompetant practitioners no less, will dog me the rest of my life.

What pisses me off so much about this case is the fact that I can totaly see myself in this mans shoes 10 or 15 years from now when I am no longer able to deal with the increased pain of my degenerative condition, and some Doctor refuses to use needed pain medication simply because some family doctor with no interest in the true disease, misdiagnosed me as chemically dependant.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

:hug:

There is still hope, but we need to demand reform, both of the medical profession and the judicial system that MUST be made to stay out of MEDICAL issues.

Doctors have also freaked out and overreacted re: drug dependancy. Under-treatment of pain is a VERY serious problem in our country and we must get the word out.

With cases like this, and Rush's, as well as increased governmental oversight of prescriptions the problem will only get worse.

:-)

:eyes:

;-) Just kidding.

edit typo

is this a case they can take up?

I don't know if he would touch the drug issue during the campaign.

However, considering the Rush events, I don't know if there will ever be another time when politicians will be so innocculated against the "soft on drugs" charge.

And Florida is a very important state. Anybody have any contacts in the Kerry campaign?

...prosecutors don't have to PROVE that someone is a 'drug dealer'...just that they hold a certain amount of drugs. There's no indication that they caught him selling or giving away the drugs.

- The drug war hysteria has been renewed by the likes of Ashcroft and the GOP Nazis in Congress...who don't seem to see the hypocrisy in letting REPUBLICAN SUPPORTERS like Limbaugh evade the law.

About the legality of charging someone automatically with "intent to distrubute" when there is ZERO evidence of dealing, just because of the amount a person is in possession of.