PAIN VICTIM WHO FORGED PRESCRIPTIONS FREED FROM JAIL

A traffic crash that left Richard Paey in such pain that he forged
prescriptions ultimately led him to a wheelchair and then a prison
cell, where he was sentenced to 25 years as a drug trafficker.

On Thursday, as Paey's attorney, wife and four children wept, Gov.
Charlie Crist and the Cabinet said it was all too much. They
unanimously and unexpectedly voted to give Paey a full pardon and
released him from prison about five hours later.

'It is unbelievable. It is like Dorothy going home. I was thinking
that on the way down here, 'There is no place like home.' That has
been on my mind for . . . 1,165 days I have been in prison," Paey
said after a guard wheeled him out of Tomoka Correctional Institution
in Daytona Beach.

Behind bars for the past 3 1/2 years, Paey received even stronger
drugs -- liquid morphine -- than what got him imprisoned in the first
place, because prison doctors quickly recognized his plight. None of
it made sense to Paey, resigned to being a victim of a war on drugs
that doesn't discern between the criminal and the ill. Everyone,
including judges, acknowledged Paey was obtaining the pills to treat
debilitating pain, not to sell them.

'A Day for Miracles'

"Today was the day for miracles," he said. "I didn't think this day
would come."

Pay, 49, a Hudson lawyer, felt the system had been stacked against
him and his family ever since he was arrested by Pasco County
sheriff's investigators on a tip from a pharmacist concerned he was a
junkie. He was charged in 1997 with filling out fake prescriptions
for about 700 oxycodone and 400 hydrocodone narcotic painkillers and
320 Valium pills.

Paey and his attorney, John P. Flannery, have said he had to forge
the prescriptions because he was in so much pain and doctors --
worried that federal prosecutors would question them -- didn't
prescribe enough.

Flannery, a former federal prosecutor who worked with presidential
candidate Rudy Giuliani in the 1970s, said the war on drugs has
produced something even worse than fear: mandatory minimum sentences
that tie judges' hands. As a result, Paey was treated as if he had
run a cocaine cartel.

"I received a 25-year mandatory sentence. That's the harshest
nondeath penalty sentence that the state of Florida can hand out,"
Paey said. "Given my health, I didn't expect to walk out."

He said he has seen a half-dozen men in the next bunk die in prison,
and he too expected to die there.

"This is not a pleasant case," said Attorney General Bill McCollum, a
member of the Cabinet and a Republican who noted that he supported
mandatory minimum sentences when he was in Congress. "Our laws are
very much to blame."

But so are Pasco County prosecutors, said Paey's wife Linda, who said
she couldn't understand why they zealously pursued her husband
through three trials despite the widespread acknowledgement that he
was a pain victim and not a drug dealer.

"I've changed. I no longer trust the police. I don't trust the
justice system," she told the Cabinet. "Only the media got our case right."

Crist, too, took a swipe at the prosecutors, saying the war on drugs
itself isn't just to blame in cases such as this. "If they're
prosecuted appropriately, then justice will be done," said Crist, a Republican.

"Obviously, this case cries out for a review of that process."

A spokesman for the office of Pasco and Pinellas State Attorney
Bernie McCabe did not return a call for comment.

Even before he became governor, Crist was familiar with the case.
When he was attorney general, his office had supported the
prosecution when Paey's legal team appealed the conviction.

Flannery said Crist's attorneys "made me proud to be a lawyer"
because even they acknowledged to the three-judge appeal panel that
Paey's sentence could amount to unconstitutional cruel and unusual
punishment. All the judges urged a pardon and said the Legislature,
which goes out of its way to appear tough on crime, should change the law.

Still, two of the judges upheld the conviction, with one dissenting,
noting the law gives "a howitzer to the executive branch with
apparent authority to use on a squirrel."

The state's parole commission recommended denying clemency for Paey,
who was seeking only to have his prison sentence commuted.

Crist Steps In

When Crist heard the case, he swiftly moved for a full pardon --
meaning Paey will have the right to vote and carry firearms. State
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink seconded the motion.

Paey said he just wants to hug his wife and kids and pet his dog,
Heidi. After that, he intends to become active in support of fairer
sentences and better treatment of sick people hurt by the war on drugs.

"We're all victims in this war. I think generations to come will look
back and scarcely believe how we treated sick people. [It's] not a
criminal problem. It is a public health problem," he said. "Prison is
the old way. We have to think of better solutions."