SUPPORTERS: PASCO COUNTY MAN'S CASE SHOWS UNFAIRNESS OF DRUG WAR

TAMPA, Fla. - Supporters say Richard Paey was a wheelchair-bound man
in constant, brutal pain who needed large amounts of prescription
narcotics just to live a normal life. Prosecutors say he sought way
too many of those often-abused painkillers and that makes him a criminal.

On Tuesday, as Paey's attorney tried to persuade the 2nd District
Court of Appeal to throw out his 2004 drug trafficking convictions
and mandatory 25-year sentence, advocates for chronic pain sufferers
said the case illustrates flaws in the law and how people who are
dependent on strong pain medication can get tangled up in the
government's overzealous war on drugs.

"I don't think anybody ever thought the war on drugs was going to
mean a war on pain patients and their doctors, but that is in fact
what it has meant," said Siobhan Reynolds of the Pain Relief Network,
an advocacy group that is helping with Paey's appeal.

Paey is a 47-year-old former attorney and father of three who
suffered a serious back injury in a 1985 car accident and since has
been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was left in a wheelchair
and constant agony.

Nothing blunted the pain - he has described it as feeling like his
legs were on fire - except strong narcotics like Percocet and
Vicodin, which he bought from pharmacies in numbers that got the
attention of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and local authorities.

Prosecutors said he was forging prescriptions and getting so many
pills that he had to be selling them, even though investigators'
two-month surveillance turned up nothing and there was no other
evidence supporting that claim. Paey said that because doctors in
Florida were reluctant to prescribe medication in the amounts he
required, he got his former doctor in New Jersey to send him undated
prescriptions he could fill here.

The doctor testified at trial that he had never authorized the number
of the pills Paey bought, even though other evidence contradicted
him. A jury convicted Paey of 15 counts of prescription forgery,
unlawful possession of a controlled substance and drug trafficking.
The judge imposed the minimum mandatory sentence of 25 years.

Paey's wife, Linda, said her husband was offered plea deals that
would have kept him out of prison. But he rejected them because he
didn't think he had done anything wrong and shouldn't have to live
with the conviction and label of drug trafficker.

"I think they expected most of these drug-war type of victims to take
a plea, and they were absolutely shocked that he wouldn't take it,"
she said. "He thought he was going to win."

On Tuesday, his attorney, John P. Flannery, told the three-judge
appellate panel that the 25-year mandatory sentence was cruel and
unusual punishment. Further, Flannery said, the doctor lied on the
witness stand and the prosecutor knew it.

Flannery told the judges that Paey is now getting pain relief in
prison, via a morphine drip.

"It's amazing to me that the Florida prison understands what the
Florida prosecutor does not," he said.

Assistant Attorney General John W. Klawikofsky defended the
conviction and sentence, saying that the evidence seized from Paey's
house amounted to "a little prescription factory."

The law, he said, dictates that someone who has a large number of
pills is considered to be trafficking, even if there is no evidence
of sale. Paey at one point got 800 pills containing oxycodone in 1
1/2 months, when just 100 would have been enough to charge him with
trafficking, Klawikofsky said.

He noted that Paey was offered plea deals, and that the minimum
mandatory sentence he eventually received was dictated by Florida Legislature.

Linda Paey said she hopes the appeal and national attention that
included a segment on the "60 Minutes" TV show last month will help.

"I'm hoping that the judges here can act with courage and right this
terrible wrong and help me get my family back together again," she said.

The appeals court did not indicate when it would rule.