Prisoner Of Pain

CBS News ^ | Jan. 26, 2006 | Deirdre Naphin

[Mojave]

There are multiple ping lists for the vocal handful of people here who never use drugs themselves, but have made legalizing them the focal-point of their political philosophy.

LOL

[spunkets]

"Wanna bet the disqualifier for jury service was "have you ever had a headache or worse.""

LOL! You nailed it! That and extra help to navigate to the jury box.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ah you reveal your mind. General public = Rats.

[robertpaulsen]

"They probably just had his word to go on and thought 25 pills a day sounded like way more than a person could take."

No, they would have seen that he was using 25 pills/day for two years, then in the last three months he dropped to 12 pills/day, and would have concluded that he had been selling the drugs.

You, on the other hand, deal with that discrepancy by totally ignoring it.

[robertpaulsen]

"Ah you reveal your mind. General public = Rats."

More like the Rats IN the general public, yeah.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You are a jackboot that makes _Jim look like a liberal.

[Wolfie]

With a complete lack of even a tiny shred of evidence that he was selling any of these drugs, it would be hard to convince me beyond reasonable doubt that this guy was selling them.

That's the beauty of "intent to distribute" laws. The State doesn't have to prove any actual distribution takes place.

[Mojave]

You are a jackboot that makes _Jim look like a liberal.

Take that _Jim! You liberal!!!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Question also, HOW did he "take the pills". Did he find a clever way to make 12 do the duty of 25 or more. Like crushing, snorting, shooting, all that gross stuff that junkies do. Not all of a normally swallowed tablet ever makes it into the blood from the stomach and intestines.

[Ramius]

I think the point is that the prosecutor was saying that it was an impossible number of pills for one person to merely be taking themselves.

One pill an hour will be easily around the 18,000 pills in two years. If he's taking four or five of them every four or five hours, it's not impossible at all.

It is a quantity that he might quite reasonably have been taking himself, and therefore the trafficking charge was not provable on that evidence alone.

[TKDietz]

"Uh-huh. They convicted him of 15 counts of prescription forgery, unlawful possession of a controlled substance, and drug trafficking. In Florida. I'd say they had a pretty good idea that the sentence would be severe."

That's what you think. I talk to jurors all the time after trials. These people do not tend to know much about laws. It may seem to you that everyone should know this stuff, but most people never think about all this nonsense. They aren't arguing about drug laws on freerepublic day in and day out like you. They could care less. They just expect the system to be fair and produce fair results. I've talked to a lot who were surprised at what the minimum sentences ended up being, or even that there were minimum sentences. People tend to think that the court can give whatever sentences they want and they hope that the court will use good sense in how sentences are imposed. And when it comes right down to it, their job in the guilt phase of the trial is not to worry about what the possible sentences are. Their job is to decide whether they believe the prosecutor has proven each and every element of the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

"Neither do I, but how much can it be when the alternative is 25 years in the slammer? Like, "Gee, I can't do three years of house arrest. Give me 25 years in prison instead"?"

This is where I suspect the defense attorney dropped the ball as far as plea negotiations go. The prosecutor is quoted as saying, "We were very reasonable in this case. But once somebody says, I'm not going to accept a plea offer however reasonable it is … " Apparently, when they rejected the initial offer the only other offer they ever got was five years in the pen. My guess, and I may wrong, is that this guy's attorney was a jerk to the prosecutor when he rejected the initial offer. Otherwise the offer wouldn't normally have gone from house arrest to five years in the pen. I never tell the prosecutors that my client absolutely will not accept a plea offer no matter how reasonable it is, even if my client said he won't. People say things they don't mean, and they change their minds. If my client tells me that the prosecutor can kiss his you know what and stick his offer up you know where, I'm not going to pass it on to the prosecutor exactly like that. I'll use a little tact, and try to keep the door open for a plea, because it may turn out that later on in the case as I look through all the evidence that comes in that my client absolutely needs to plead.

If I have a doctor saying my client forged the prescriptions along with other evidence to support that, I'm having a long hard talk with my client. He's going to know that I think he will be convicted, and he's going to know what kind of sentence he is potentially facing, and if he still wants to go to trial he's going to sign an affidavit showing that I've laid out the facts against him, informed him of the offer, advised him to take it, but that he still wants to go to trial knowing he'll probably get convicted and go down for a long time. I can't force him to plead, but I will sure try to convince him that he needs to plead if all the evidence is against him and the offer is better than what I think he'll get at trial. Often that is the best thing I can do for my clients. Some lawyers haven't figured that one out yet. They don't realize that they are doing a terrible disservice to their clients if they don't use a little "tough love" when it is warranted. They end up taking a lot of cases to trial that should never have made it that far, and their clients end up paying the price for their negligence. A good lawyer knows which cases are losers and which cases are winners. He avoids taking the losers to trial, especially when losing at trial will cost his client dearly.

This case never should have gone to trial. Perhaps the client and his attorney thought they'd prevail on the trafficking charge, but the risk was too high. If it were my case, I would have probably tried like crazy to get the prosecutors to drop the trafficking charge and convince my client he needs to plead on the prescription fraud charges.

Again though, we're just guessing about what really happened. We don't know. We've just read an article or two. We can't possibly get all the facts from a couple of articles. My experience at least has been that a lot of what comes out in the media about court cases is wrong anyway. I've done all the second guessing and pontificating and back seat lawyering I care to do on this one. I'd just as soon not argue with you about it anymore. If you didn't get so hateful and nasty with your comments it might be fun to talk about it. But you suck all the fun out of it for me.

[Mojave]

If he's taking four or five of them every four or five hours, it's not impossible at all.

Lemme guess: He had a friend feed him the pills while he was sleeping?

[robertpaulsen]

"It is a quantity that he might quite reasonably have been taking himself"

Fine. Let's concede that. 25 pills/day. That's what he needed to keep the pain at bay.

My question is: Why did he fill prescriptions for only 1200 pills for the three months from January to March, 1997, the month he was arrested? What's a reasonable explanation for that?

[TKDietz]

Maybe he started cutting down when his family found out how much he was taking. Maybe he was getting them somewhere else. Who knows? Unless I read what I read incorrectly he is now receiving more than the equivalent of 25 pills per day. It looks like this guy got addicted to drugs he was prescribed because of a legitimate health problems. Cut him a little slack, and cut those of us who feel sorry for him a little slack too. We can't help it if we have hearts. We can't all be as hate filled as you.

[mugs99]

Hmmmmm. That equates to about 12 pills/day right before he was arrested. But the article above states that he was using 25 pills/day, average, over two years.

So, he was using as much as Rush Limbaugh. Why isn't Rush his cellmate?
.

[robertpaulsen]

"We can't help it if we have hearts."

No. But your heart is doing your thinking, and that you can help.

[tpaine]

There are a vocal handful of people here who have made the criminalization of drugs the focal-point of their political philosophy, -- to the point that they actively oppose our Constitutional way of life in a free republic.

They even think that they have the power to decree how much painkilling medicine their peers can use.

Try to figure that one.

[mugs99]

Paey gets all the medication he needs now, in larger doses than he was taking before, from the state through a pump connected directly to his spine.

What a compassionate nation we are!
.

[robertpaulsen]

"So, he was using as much as Rush Limbaugh. Why isn't Rush his cellmate?"

Because of the U.S. Constitution.

[robertpaulsen]

I wonder why our Mr. Paey didn't do that before? Too hard to sell morphine in a bottle?