THAT PLEA DEAL DOESN'T LOOK SO BAD NOW

It has probably dawned upon Richard Paey by now that he's not sitting
in prison because he is a dubiously convicted dreaded drug trafficker.

He's sitting - literally, in a wheelchair - behind bars because he
annoyed the law and the law won.

Paey's case became something of a national cause celebre after his
theater of the absurdist case showed up in the St. Petersburg Times
and later in a "60 Minutes" segment a few weeks ago exposing the
insanity of mandatory sentencing guidelines and the dangerous
pettiness of prosecutors.

Since a 1985 car accident, Paey has suffered excruciating back pain,
exacerbated by the onset of multiple sclerosis.

And thus it was that Paey began accumulating large stocks of
painkillers, stuff like Percocet and Vicodin, to relieve the agony.

Indeed, if any of you of have suffered chronic back pain and/or
sciatica, you can probably relate to Paey's predicament. Sealed Fate

In 1997, Pasco County sheriff's deputies raided Paey's home and
confiscated several hundred pills.

The former lawyer was subsequently charged with drug trafficking, even
though there was no evidence presented at Paey's 2004 trial that he
had sold drugs.

As well, although Paey was accused of forging prescriptions, no
evidence on that charge was substantiated in court.

Still, a jury convicted Paey on 15 counts of prescription forgery,
possession of a controlled substance and drug trafficking, and the
father of three was sent to the slammer for 25 years.

A few days ago, the 2nd District Court of Appeal heard arguments to
overturn Paey's sentence on a number of grounds, including the point
that sending a man to prison for a quarter of a century simply because
he was in the throes of incredible pain constitutes cruel and unusual
punishment.

But you also could make a case that Paey sealed his own fate when he
rejected various plea deals that would have set him free, persisting
instead in making the argument that he was innocent.

As the case wound its way though the legal system, Paey was offered
plea bargains that would have kept him out of prison, his wife, Linda,
told The Associated Press. Running Puppies

After all, Paey was hardly the Pablo Escobar of Sacroiliacs. He wasn't
a criminal. He wasn't running puppies with smack sewn into their
stomachs across the border.

Paey was simply a guy with a lot of hurt sitting in a
wheelchair.

There's a fair point to be made that any time the state offers a
defendant an opportunity to take a plea deal there's a tacit
recognition perhaps the case wasn't that strong to begin with - such
as lack of evidence or questionable testimony.

It's not unreasonable to assume the badges knew Paey wasn't a drug
desperado, that perhaps the plea deal was little more than a face-
saving effort on the part of embarrassed law enforcement to avoid
sending a handicapped man in a wheelchair to prison.

Alas, Paey was stubborn in insisting upon his innocence, and now he is
a convicted felon.

As well, this case speaks to the handcuffs placed on judges in being
obligated to follow mandatory sentencing guidelines - even when the
defendant standing (make that sitting) before the bench has no
business going to prison.

The irony, of course, is that the inmate has been fitted with a
taxpayer-funded morphine pump, providing even more intense drug relief
from pain than anything Paey was ingesting outside of prison.

Gracious, who is really the "trafficker" in this case?