Richard Paey

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Richard Paey is a man incarcerated in Florida for the distribution of drugs, despite the fact that there is no evidence he ever sold a single pill, based on drug laws that allow officials to prosecute based on the quantity an individual possesses.

[edit] History

Paey was sentenced to a 25 year mandatory minimum prison sentence in 2004. In 1985 he was involved in an automobile accident. A subsequent botched operation left him in near constant pain. He developed a tolerance to the opioid painkillers he was using to alleviate his suffering. Detectives began their investigation of him in 1996. Due to the quantities of pills he was buying, it was believed he was trafficking the drugs. However, a three month investigation turned up no such evidence, and the quantities he bought are not unusual for long time users of opioid painkillers. Nonetheless he was arrested in March 1997.

Prosecutors offered Paey a plea deal in 1999 that would have resulted in a guilty plea of attempted trafficking and 3 years of house arrest, Paey chose to fight the charges. A similar plea was offered during his first trial in 2002, it was quickly rescinded after it was accepted by Paey. Mr. Paey was eventually convicted in his third trial on 15 counts of drug trafficking, possession of a controlled substance, and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. On April 16, 2004 he was sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Later, Dwayne Hillis, one of the jurors in the trial, came publicly forward and said he was pressured into a guilty verdict with assurances that Richard Paey would serve no jail term.

Paey is currently serving his sentence at the Tomoka Correctional facility in Daytona Beach, Florida. The state now pays for a direct IV pump of morphine directly into his back to alleviate his pain. The strength of the morphine drip is supposedly stronger than the drugs he was arrested for in the first place.[1]

Paey's case is the subject of a book Pain In America and an upcoming film documentary The War on Drugs.