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Long Term Care: Take two aspirin and call me in 25 years

Following up on our earlier story about Richard Paey, the wheel-chair bound MS sufferer who procured pain medication for himself when no doctor would treat him; Jacob Sullum has an excellent piece on his sentencing.

Despite never having sold one pill to anyone, Paey received 25 years in jail under mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for drug trafficking. It took prosecutors three tries to convict him and it appears they finally won a conviction by misleading the jury (with the help of the foreman) into thinking Paey would receive probation in lieu of incarceration.

A juror later told the St. Petersburg Times he did not really think Paey was guilty of trafficking, since the prosecution made it clear from the outset that he didn't sell any pills. The juror said he voted guilty to avoid being the lone holdout. He suggested that other jurors might have voted differently if the foreman had not assured them Paey would get probation.

Paey being a man of integrity, turned down plea bargains that would have kept him out of prison.

Paey's real crime, it seems, is not drug trafficking but ingratitude. "My husband was so adamant, and so strongly defending this from the very beginning, that it might have annoyed them," says Linda Paey. "They were extremely upset that he would not accept a plea bargain. They felt that anyone who had any common sense would....But he didn't want to say he was guilty of something he didn't do."

It appears to me, the only crime Richard Paey committed was being too honest a man. Hats off to his bravery in following his principles and throwing his fate to a "jury of his peers". It's a shame they didn't show his kind of courage and refuse to convict him on such obviously false charges.

One can only hope the next time that juror -- or any one of us who is called to duty-- is faced with holding up the deliberations by following his principles, he won't worry about embarrassment and will cast his vote for justice instead of expediency.