RIGHTEOUS

Crist, Cabinet Display Uncommon Humanity

Government in general is not known for compassion. Nor is wisdom a
word that people necessarily associate with the political process.

But on Thursday, Gov. Charlie Crist and members of the Florida
Cabinet - Attorney General Bill McCollum, Chief Financial Officer
Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson - displayed
compassion and wisdom so extraordinary it was breathtaking.

In their capacity as the state clemency board, they granted a full
pardon to an imprisoned Pasco County man with chronic and severe
pain, and for whom the law simply failed.

By extending a pardon to 48-year-old disabled former attorney Richard
Paey, the governor and Cabinet went above and beyond what Mr. Paey's
family had sought - and ordered the inmate's immediate release.

It would have been enough had they commuted Mr. Paey's misguided
drug-trafficking conviction and 25-year sentence to the nearly four
years he had served, and rejected the advice of the Florida Parole
Commission. It had recommended against even commuting Mr. Paey's
sentence to time served.

Instead, Mssrs. Crist, McCollum and Bronson and Ms. Sink stunned
everyone in the Cabinet meeting room by demonstrating that
politicians, often vilified, are fully capable of simply doing what's
right, the system be damned.

Mr. Paey, whose case has received national attention, has lived with
chronic pain since a 1985 car wreck. His supporters say he needed
prescription drugs to cope with pain. He also suffers from multiple
sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.

He was first arrested in 1997 and convicted on prosecutors' third try
in 2004 on drug charges in Pasco County after they alleged that he
must have been selling painkillers, despite a lack of evidence,
because he illegally possessed so many that he couldn't possibly use
them all himself.

"We aim to right a wrong and exercise compassion and to do it with
grace," Mr. Crist said.

Mr. Paey's supporters said the case illustrates a flaw in the law -
how chronic-pain patients can be snared in a war on drugs that never
was intended to target people who need prescription narcotics just to
live lives approaching some semblance of normalcy.

Mr. McCollum agreed.

"I think our laws fundamentally are very much to blame for this," the
attorney general said. "Justice would truly have to have a blind eye
not to grant a pardon."

The dictionary defines "righteous" as acting in a just, upright
manner. Mr. Crist and the Cabinet certainly did that Thursday. In so
doing they defied the stereotype and sent the message that cynicism
about politics and politicians is not always justified.