Pubdate: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL) Copyright: 2007 St. Petersburg Times Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/ Website: http://www.sptimes.com/home.shtml Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419 Author: Howard Troxler Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Richard+Paey Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?245 (Clemency - United States) CLEMENCY PUTS SAFETY VALVE ON RULE OF LAW The case of Richard Paey of Pasco County, who was pardoned by Florida's governor and Cabinet last week, is a great illustration of the role of clemency. Paey was found guilty of possessing 700 Percocets, a pain drug, enough to trigger the state's trafficking laws. Never mind that he was not a drug trafficker, or that he had the drug because he was crippled by pain from disease and past injury. A jury said that by the letter of the law, he was guilty of trafficking. An appeals court ruled that it had no choice but to uphold the verdict. You can argue that we ought to change our law that says, if you have X pills you are a drug dealer. You also can argue that the prosecutors should have shown discretion and compassion. But in the strictest sense, what happened to Paey, including his 25-year sentence, was what Florida law said was supposed to happen. To paraphrase Dickens, the law can be a donkey. There was no room to consider Paey's unique circumstances. So off to prison he went, serving 3 1/2 years of his 25-year sentence, just as if he had been peddling the stuff to little kids outside the schoolyard. He considered trying the U.S. Supreme Court, but dropped it. Instead, Paey pinned his hopes on clemency, a time-honored grant of relief enshrined in our federal and state constitutions. The grant of clemency is often described as an "act of grace." It is a decision that the recipient deserves mercy, not necessarily that the court system was in error (although it can mean that, too). Sometimes get-tough politicians mangle up this idea. Now and then you run across a state governor who brags about never giving anybody a pardon, period. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts running for president, likes to say that he never granted a pardon because "I didn't want to overturn a jury." Since granting a pardon is precisely the act of overturning a jury, all he is saying is, "I didn't grant any pardons because I didn't want to." The governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, is said to be of like mind. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, on the other hand, sometimes was criticized for granting clemency too liberally. One of his more interesting pardons was for Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist, on a 1975 reckless-driving charge. In Florida, we don't let our governor hand out pardons willy-nilly. The governor's approval is required, but it also takes a vote of the elected state Cabinet. Clemency can mean a pardon, a commutation or delay of sentence, restoration of civil rights or the forgiveness of a fine. There are two kinds of clemency the governor and Cabinet cannot grant unilaterally. An impeached public official can't be pardoned. And clemency granted to a person convicted of treason must be confirmed or reversed by the Legislature. The presence of clemency in our federal and state constitutions is a recognition that even with our rule of law, with laws that are intended to protect our liberty, we still need a safety valve. So give me a politician who uses clemency carefully but with mercy, as our governor and Cabinet have done here. One who brags about refusing to use it either misunderstands its purpose, or misstates it deliberately. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake