Posted on 12/13/2006 6:54:17 AM PST by FormerACLUmember
Remember the girl who received a five-day suspension for bringing Tylenol to school? If that punishment seems excessive, how about a 25-year prison sentence for having Tylenol at home?
In 2004 a Florida jury convicted Richard Paey of drug trafficking involving at least 28 grams of the narcotic painkiller oxycodone, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years. But there was no evidence that Paey, who has suffered from severe chronic pain for two decades, planned to do anything with the pain reliever except relieve his pain. And since he was taking Percocet, a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen, the over-the-counter analgesic accounted for 98 percent of the weight used to calculate his sentence.
This penalty is both cruel and unusual; first-time offenders charged with unauthorized possession of prescription drugs typically get probation. But last week Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Paey's punishment is not "grossly disproportionate" enough to be considered "cruel and unusual" under the Eighth Amendment or even "cruel or unusual" under the state constitution. The court nevertheless made the rare gesture of urging Paey to seek clemency from the governor, who can commute his sentence to time served (three years) and should do so as a matter of basic decency.
Today Paey, a father of three who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, receives morphine from a pump prescribed by a prison doctor. The drugs that led to his arrest in 1997 were the same ones his New Jersey doctor, Stephen Nurkiewicz, prescribed for the severe back pain that resulted from a 1985 car crash and the unsuccessful surgeries that followed: Percocet, the painkiller Lortab, and the muscle relaxant Valium.
After Paey and his family moved to Pasco County, Florida, in 1994, Nurkiewicz continued to treat him--a fact that highlights the difficulty pain patients have in finding doctors willing to prescribe adequate doses of narcotics. Paey said Nurkiewicz authorized all the prescriptions he filled in Florida. Nurkiewicz, who could have faced charges himself if he had backed up Paey's story, said he stopped treating Paey in December 1996.
At worst, then, Paey was guilty of fraudulently obtaining drugs for his own consumption, either to treat his pain (as he insisted) or to maintain an addiction he developed while treating his pain (as the prosecution suggested). There was no evidence he was selling the drugs or planned to do so.
But as the Florida appeals court explained, "a person need not sell anything to commit the ‘trafficking' offense"; all that's required is possession of at least four grams of "any mixture containing" oxycodone. Hence each of Paey's 100-pill Percocet prescriptions, weighing in at 33 grams, qualified him as a trafficker several times over. Each also qualified him for the 25-year mandatory minimum sentence.
The prosecutors have 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," said Bernie McCabe, Pasco County's state attorney, after the appeals court ruling. Even assuming defendants should be punished for insisting on their right to a trial, does 25 years seem like a fair penalty?
Calling Paey's punishment "illogical, absurd, unjust, and unconstitutional," a dissenting appeals court judge faulted the prosecution for abusing the law. "With no competent proof that [Paey] intended to do anything other than put the drugs into his own body for relief from his persistent and excruciating pain," he wrote, "the State chose to prosecute him and treat him as a trafficker in illegal drugs."
Outgoing Gov. Jeb Bush, whose own daughter was sentenced to probation and treatment for trying to obtain Xanax illegally, should recognize the senselessness of punishing someone who has never trafficked in drugs for drug trafficking. The appeals court said Paey's plea for justice "does not fall on deaf ears, but it falls on the wrong ears." Let's hope the right ears are not deaf.
That attitude is so f%$&ed up. Overcharge someone in hopes of getting them for what they are actually guilty of. If the prosecutor thought he was simply guilty of possessing a controlled substance, why not charge him with that?
You bad. 8>)
"Sorry, dude, Bones75 has someone else in his corner, ME!
Reading his post was like reading me. GMTA."
Thanks, Bud. After I posted, I wondered if I went a bit too far. But see, these types of injustices perpetrated against people just gets me really hot under the collar. I wish more people would realize it.
That's what got me to try to research the rest of the story.
I don't know the facts, but my guess is that he was arrested with the pills and they tried to plea bargain it to a less serious offense and he refused. They then had to choose between letting him go or charging him and hoping the judge would offer a lenient sentence.
The Governor's office said that they're still waiting for the defense attorneys to submit the request to commute the sentence.
If the state gets rid of minimum sentencing laws we'll go back to having major drug dealers getting a slap on the wrist (in response to some cash changing hands.) If we keep them there will be more cases like this. Unfortunately, the answer is to make the judges accountable for bad sentencing and that doesn't seem to happen here in Florida. I don't ever remember seeing a seated judge getting voted out of office, no matter how crooked or incompetent they are.
Well, I am impressed!
Reading his post was like reading me.
I'm sorry.
GMTA
TA is not limited to GM, apparently.
Traffic means buying and selling, not just buying alone. However, you are probably right about how the legislature and courts are (mis)using the word.
That said, in this case the DA was completely out of line to prosecute this.
Agreed.
Truthfully, I have mixed feelings on the whole drug war. As I'm something of a libertarian, I naturally tend to think that what one ingests is personal, not public, business. But as a father who raised 2 children, I've been generally grateful that drugs were illegal, and grateful my kids didn't use 'em.
I suppose there is more to this story than made it to the article, maybe the accused is trying to prove a point, maybe there are others behind this who want to prove the point. It's starting to sound like there was a war of sorts between the accused and the authorities. If there was, I guess the authorites took the bait, which may not have been a good move.
It stopped me. So there goes that argument. I just said no, thanks to Reagan.
"his stubbornness in turning down plea bargains"
If he is not guilty, he does not have anything to bargain.
We have a War on Some Terrorists, so what's the difference?
Why did the jury convict?
Wow, you appreciate drugs being illegal and that probably kept your kids safe. How dare you! /s
The Liberaltarians and Democrats will be very angry at that reaction. Afterall, we all know potheads like illegal immigrants tend to side with Republicans overall, right? Hahahah.
I think that most people are just looking for a little common sense and justice in the "justice system".
When murderers, rapists and child molesters get less time than like the fellow depicted in this story, there's a problem. I hardly call that "hyperbolic".
"these types of injustices perpetrated against people..."
[If the state gets rid of minimum sentencing laws we'll go back to having major drug dealers getting a slap on the wrist (in response to some cash changing hands.) If we keep them there will be more cases like this. Unfortunately, the answer is to make the judges accountable for bad sentencing and that doesn't seem to happen here in Florida. I don't ever remember seeing a seated judge getting voted out of office, no matter how crooked or incompetent they are.]
You're right. Judges are the problem nationwide, not just in Florida.
Yeah, and morphine is GOOD
Bleow are excerpts of some news stories I was able to find. This guy, while not deserving 25 years, did deserve to be prosecuted for forging prescriptions. You don't have your doctor's DEA number and all the supplies to forge scripts if that's not what you're doing. Come on, 18,000 pills, I don't know how he afforded to buy them in the first place.
But when he was later shown evidence that Paey had filled 200 prescriptions over a two year period for 18,000 pills, he then stated that all of the prescriptions were forgeries, including some he had originally verified to pharmacists.
"In Richard Paey's room, all over his room, there were the raw materials to make prescriptions," says Andringa. "They found a lot of documents that suggested forging prescriptions, copying prescriptions, in order to create new blank prescriptions."
In addition to the blank prescriptions, Andringa says police also found a copy machine, a doctor’s stamp and Nurkiewicz’s DEA number written in Paey’s address book.
"It's a crime to forge prescriptions, which is what he did, and it's a crime to use a forged prescription that you stole in order to get drugs from a pharmacy, which is what he did," Andringa says.
But Andringa says Paey couldn’t possibly have taken all of the pills he obtained — an amount that would require him to consume 25 pills a day.
"One pill every hour, every day, for two years, with assuming he didn't sleep. If he slept for any period of time during that two-year period, he'd have to take more," he says.
And Paey easily obtained that amount. Surveillance video shows Paey walking with difficulty, with the aid of leg braces. It also shows him obtaining 1,600 pills over a 41 day period, with eight prescriptions that his doctor said were forged. Paey was facing serious charges.
If you watch the TV show "House", he is having the same problem( getting the pain killers he needs to function ) with a dumb ass detective whom he pi$$ed off .
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