My Google alert on the phrase "Richard Paey" found this site, so I thought I'd join, listen a while, and comment occasionally. Richard Paey is a serious chronic pain patient whose home was raided in early 1997 by his local sheriff because Richard was using "too much" opioid (mainly Percocet). When Richard's doctor was threatened by DEA and told that Richard was selling his pills, his MD abandoned him and Richard committed prescription fraud to get relief. The local prosecutor then hounded him for 7 years through 3 trials and finally got him convicted under Chapter 893 of the FL Statutes. Richard in now 3 yrs "down" on a 25 year mandatory minimum (i.e. no parole allowed) sentence. He is reasonably comfortable, his destroyed spine fed by a sewed-in morphine pump, but also suffers advanced MS. He lives in a wheelchair in the FL Prison near Daytona Beach.

He has exhausted all his appeals in FL except asking Governor Charlie Crist for clemency, as the FL Appeals Court suggested he do when they turned him down 2-1 back in December. The FL Supreme Court has declined to hear the case. The American Pain Foundation has gone to bat for Richard, urging Americans to write Gov Crist. you can do this at http://painfoundation.org/ where Richard is currently featured at the top of that page. You do not need to be a Florida resident; in fact I think non-residents have more clout owing to FL's tourist-rich economy.

If anyone wants to read the decision of the FL Appeals Court, just let me know.

By way of full disclosure, I've been an advisor for about nine years to www.november.org, the organization of the families/friends of drug prisoners. I came off the sidelines when I realized that the drug war had escalated so far beyond the point of diminishing returns that each uptick now causes far more societal damage than it prevents. Most of the damage is done to people too weak to fight. Richard happens to have both the will and the resources to fight. His case is an example of the imbalance the drug war has brought to the criminal justice system.

Richard is serving his country in that FL Prison by helping educate Americans on the need to carve out a space in anti-drug law for legitimate pain patients. This holy war against docs and patients must end.

Now I'll shut up for a while......................

p.s. I first saw the Paey family in a Pinellas-Pasco Florida courtroom in August 2002. I walked away from that hearing almost sick to my stomach after watching several local police talking and laughing among themselves during the hearing, at which a sick man in a wheelchair was to be sentenced to 25 years, no parole. As it turned out, Paey's lawyer gently persuaded the judge that he had no choice but to overturn the jury verdict at the trial at which he - the judge - had presided. It was on a technicality. The judge was so miffed he set Paey's bail at $1 million, an amount later reduced and a different judge assigned to the case.