In April 2004 Richard Paey, a father of three in his mid-forties, and a recent sufferer of multiple sclerosis, was found guilty of illegally obtaining, possessing and trafficking prescription drugs. Because he had in his possession more than 28 grams of the painkiller Percocet, which contains the opiate oxycodone, he received the mandatory 25 years jail sentence.
Nearly 20 years earlier, Paey, on his way to the University of Pennsylvania where he was studying law, was involved in a car crash that left him with a badly injured back. He was given large doses of painkillers very soon after. Initial back surgery only proved moderately effective for a year and so he had another operation that was severely botched and left him with spasms and in more pain. He managed to finish law school but wasn’t allowed to take the bar whilst taking medication. He went on disability in 1989. After moving to New Jersey he found Dr Steven Nurkiewicz, who was willing to prescribe the large amount of pills he needed, including Percocet.
In the 90s Paey moved to Florida and, finding it difficult to get his high-dose prescriptions from doctors fearful of the crackdown on real and imagined overprescription of painkillers, got Dr Nurkiewicz to supply him with a combination of undated prescriptions (some of which Paey photocopied) and faxed prescriptions confirmed over the phone with pharmacies. When the Drug Enforcement Agency contacted Dr Nurkiewicz, after Pasco County police became suspicious of the number of pills he was getting from pharmacies, he initially confirmed this arrangement but then backtracked under the threat of being charged himself. Paey, who had over the years tried alternative but inferior therapies for his pain, maintained that the thousands of pills he had received, required because of an increased tolerance for them, were for his own use.
While prosecutors stated they had no evidence that he ever sold them, he was still charged with trafficking due to the volume of pills they found in his home. He was offered various plea bargains over the years for reduced charges but preferred to go to court to avoid a criminal record (which would have dramatically hurt his chances of getting the pills he needed). He now sits in a wheelchair in a Florida prison, on a morphine drip, awaiting an appeal.
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