FULL PARDON BEGINS TO EASE MAN'S PAIN

Governor and Cabinet Rule a Pain Patient Shouldn't Be in Prison.

TALLAHASSEE -- Richard Paey wanted to be a lawyer and then a cop, but
the searing pain in his legs robbed him of that. He settled for being
a son, husband and father.

Then the state said he was a drug trafficker. After a decade he was
convicted on the third try and sentenced to 25 years in prison. But
the drugs were for Paey's own chronic pain, the result of a car
crash, back surgery and multiple sclerosis.

Appeal after appeal fell through. He found sympathy, in the courts of
law and public opinion, but not relief.

Now, after more than three years in prison, Paey can call himself
something else:

A free man.

Paey, 48, was granted a full pardon Thursday by Gov. Charlie Crist
and the Florida Cabinet in Tallahassee.

"We aim to right a wrong," Crist said. "And to do it with grace."

Paey never dared dream of a full pardon. All he asked the clemency
board to do was commute his sentence to time served.

Then the governor stunned Paey's wife, Linda, and their three teenage children:

"I state he should be released today," Crist said.

Applause broke out in the Cabinet meeting room. The Paey family and
lawyer John Flannery II hugged. It was 9:40 a.m.

Nine hours later, Richard Paey came home to Hudson.

"In the immortal words of Dorothy," he said, pausing to kiss his
wife, "there's no place like home."

The reasons why Paey, who was convicted in 2004, ended up in prison
are still disputed.

Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe said Paey turned down
several plea offers that would have spared him serving any time. Paey
wanted the charges dropped, McCabe said, which he could not do.

Paey said he wanted to take a stand on behalf of pain patients but
not if it meant going to prison and leaving his family behind. It was
the state, Paey said, that scuttled any plea deals.

Paey and his side still contest every bit of the state's case.
Afterward even the jurors regretted their verdict.

Last year, Paey had his hopes pinned on an appeal to the 2nd District
Court of Appeal. In December the appellate judges upheld his
conviction and sentence but acknowledged his plight.

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

Paey is used to setbacks. A 1985 car wreck, then botched surgeries,
left him in constant pain and ended any hope of a normal life. Then,
after his 1997 arrest, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He
now uses a wheelchair.

The court told Paey to ask the governor for clemency.

Paey let a deadline to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court slip by. His
side wanted to show the governor and Cabinet how much faith he had in
them for his shot at freedom.

He needed three out of four votes, and one had to be cast by the
governor. Otherwise he would have to wait more than four years to apply again.

The Florida Parole Commission report recommended the Cabinet deny
Paey's petition. It was a controversial drug case, Flannery was told.

"Early on I had a little bit of confidence and then it was absolutely
gone when we entered," Linda Paey said.

It didn't take long to figure out which way the governor was leaning.

When Flannery's allotted five minutes before the Cabinet were up, he
asked for more time.

"Of course," the governor said. Then Crist let Linda Paey speak, all
three of their teens, even a family friend. For 40 minutes they spoke.

The Legislature never foresaw a man like Paey, Flannery said, a man
who needed massive amounts of drugs but would run afoul of laws
designed to curb possessing those amounts.

"We didn't expect to have a patient who needs more drugs than we can
comprehend in our daily lives," Flannery said.

His most powerful example of the disconnect between Florida law and
Paey's condition was this: the 700 Percocet pills Paey was accused of
trafficking, Flannery said, contained only minute amounts of the drug
Oxycodone. The rest was Tylenol. Florida's own prison system gives
him more morphine each day to treat his pain than the entire amount
of Oxycodone he was convicted of trafficking in, he said.

Paey never passed on any of his drugs to anyone else. Nor did he take
a penny for those drugs.

"He's not a drug trafficker," an emotional Linda Paey told the
Cabinet. "He is just a patient who needed pain medication."

After the emotional presentation, the first comments from the dais
came from the governor: "I want to move that we grant a full pardon."
The Cabinet made it unanimous.

It was the start of a day of surprises for the Paey family.

"I grabbed John's hand," Linda Paey said. "We came into this so
scared, trembling."

Then Crist ordered her husband released that day.

"I didn't know you could do that," Linda Paey said.

She was driving on Interstate 10, heading to Daytona Beach to get her
husband out of prison when a call delivered the last shock of the day:

The state was bringing her husband to her.

Prison staffers waited a while to break the news to Paey, but he knew
something was up. "They're comedians in prison," he joked. "They were
determined to make me suffer to the end."

The prison staff scrounged up a polo shirt and jeans for him. Two
staffers drove him home.

TV cameras were waiting.

He has gotten used to this. The 60 Minutes profile. The New York
Times interview. Paey embraced his role in a fight much larger than
himself: to protect patients and doctors from draconian drug laws.

"It's gone on for over a decade that I've been fighting," Paey said,
"over 1,100 days in prison."

Paey hugged his kids -- Catherine, 17, Elizabeth, 16, and Benjamin,
15 -- petted his dog Winnie and fulfilled his last wish upon leaving
prison: eating pizza.

Then, finally, it was his turn to fulfill someone else's wish:

His 84-year-old mother, Helen, who wanted to see her son out of
prison before she died. "I can't believe it," she said. "I'm shaking,
I'm shaking all over."