STATE GRANTS CLEMENCY ON 25-YEAR SENTENCE

HUDSON - The relief on Richard Paey's face was obvious Thursday
evening as he was helped from a government vehicle in the driveway of
a home he had not seen in more than three years.

Amid family, neighbors and a small group of media, the 48-year-old
spoke softly. "In the immortal words of Dorothy, 'there's no place like home.'

"Freedom is really everything, probably more than life itself," he
said. "This is a sign that America is a great country. The system
goofed up, but we're willing to address that."

His wife, Linda Paey, hugged him and stepped back, smiling wide.

"This morning we were scared to death," she said. "Tonight, you're home."

Hours earlier, the family was pleasantly astounded by news that
Richard Paey's 25-year prison sentence for drug trafficking was being
overturned and that he would be sent home that day. His case was
heard in Tallahassee by the governor and state Cabinet sitting as the
Board of Executive Clemency.

Traditionally, inmates must serve one-third of their time before
becoming eligible for the clemency process, but the clemency board
last month approved a waiver allowing his case to be heard early.

The Paey family arrived at the Capitol to be jolted by the news that
the state parole commission had forwarded the case with an
unfavorable recommendation.

Emotional Plea Helps Sway Board

An emotional appeal from the family helped convince Gov. Charlie
Crist, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, Agriculture Commissioner
Charles Bronson and Attorney General Bill McCollum that Paey had been
wronged when he was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to a
mandatory 25 years behind bars.

Paey was the victim of a 1985 traffic accident, and botched back
surgery left him in chronic pain. He also suffers from multiple
sclerosis. He was arrested by Pasco County deputies in 1997 after a
three-month investigation of unusual prescription fulfillment.

In his 2004 trial, Paey's attorney argued that the painkillers were
obtained legally and used solely by Paey, but a jury convicted him on
seven counts. The volume of pills involved in the formal charges, 700
tablets of the painkiller Percocet, triggered the mandatory sentence
for trafficking. Those charges stemmed from seven different incidents
of filling prescriptions of 100 pills each between January and March 1997.

Advocate Champions Release

Since then, another lawyer, John Flannery of Leesburg, Va., a
national advocate for chronic pain sufferers, has steered appeals
through the courts and the clemency process. On Thursday, he told the
panel that Paey is "a pain patient. Not a user. Not a dealer."

Despite surveillance that failed to establish Paey sold the drugs,
authorities concluded at his original trial that Paey could not have
consumed such a volume on his own. But Flannery said Thursday that
was indeed the case. In fact, Flannery said, state doctors were
treating Paey's chronic pain with a morphine pump that delivered in
just two days more medication than Paey was sent to prison for obtaining.

Flannery's outline of the case was followed by tearful testimony of
family members and a friend that silenced a Cabinet room packed with
more than 100 people and their supporters petitioning for pardons,
the restoration of their civil rights or authority to own a firearm.

A one-time neighbor, Alexis Muckle, now 20, described Richard Paey's
role as her father figure. "I never knew what having a father was
like," she told the Cabinet members. "I love him very much ... I
probably wouldn't have graduated or cared about anything" without the
Paey family, she said. "I just think the right thing to do would be
.. to let him come home. We need him."

Through tears, daughter Elizabeth, 16, said her father's case "is
like a nightmare to me.

"I just wish he would come home," she said. "It gets lonely. My mom's
always gone at work, I just wish I had someone to talk to. I just
wish this would all end."

Daughter Catherine, 17, said, "I don't want him to miss any more of
us growing up."

Crist abruptly moved for a full pardon, which would not only free
Paey from his sentence, but erase his felony conviction and restore
his civil rights, something convicted felons often must petition for.

Bronson told the governor he understood why law enforcement and
prosecutors pursued the case, "but this was a gigantic problem in the
making from the very beginning."

'We Aim To Right A Wrong'

McCollum called Paey's case "the worst example you can imagine with
respect to minimum mandatory sentences."

Approval of the full pardon was unanimous.

"They call it 'justice,'" Crist told the Paey family. "That's what
we're doing here today. We aim to right a wrong, and exercise
compassion, and do it with grace."

When Crist told the family Richard Paey would be released that day,
the Cabinet room erupted in applause.

An assistant to State Attorney Bernie McCabe, whose office prosecuted
Paey, told The Associated Press that McCabe was in meetings Thursday
and would not comment on the pardon.

Inside a stucco home on a quiet street Thursday night, Helen Paey saw
her son for the first time since he was sent to prison.

"Oh, my God, I can't believe it," she said, as she wiped tears from
her cheeks. "I'm so thrilled to see you. I'd think of you and start
crying. This was so ridiculous."

Paey held his mother's hand.

"I missed your food, mom," he said with a smile. "I was starving.
Look how much weight I lost."