Coyote Blog

Some good news today in the annals of prosecutorial misconduct and overzealousness:  The Governor of Florida has pardoned Richard Paey, the man who was sent to prison for 25 years for trying to do something about his pain.

Richard Paey, a victim in the war on
drugs, was granted a full, immediate and unexpected pardon by Gov.
Charlie Crist and the Cabinet Thursday morning, allowing him to get out
of prison and be reunited with his family later in the day.

Paey, 49,
has spent the last 3 ½ years in prison after he was convicted on drug
trafficking charges in a 1997 arrest for filling out fake prescriptions
and possessing about 700 Percocet narcotic painkillers. He was to be
imprisoned for 25 years.

The catch: Everyone, including judges,
acknowledged the traffic accident victim was using the pills for
debilitating pain. Since his incarceration, prison doctors have hooked
him up to a morphine drip, which delivers more pain medication daily
than he was convicted of trafficking.

Good.  I am cautiously optimistic that after the Duke non-rape case, there is increasing focus on the issue of prosecutorial over-zealousness.  Along these same lines, the ACLU is coming to the defense of Larry Craig.  As is the plight of the Jena 6.

OK, I have resisted commenting on Larry Craig.  My reactions are:

1. We are so off topic here it is unbelievable.  For Congress, exercising arbitrary powers over individuals in violation of the intent, if not the letter, of the Constitution:  OK.  Playing footsie in the bathroom: Not OK
2. Are we really going to have a Congressman resign for tapping his foot in a public bathroom while a man who had $100,000 in cash bribe money found in his freezer still sits in office?
3. Why is it that Democrats, against their political beliefs, feel the need to criticize Republicans for being gay while Republicans feel the need to criticize Democrats for having large homes and SUVs?
4. Do we really pay police officers to sit on the toilet for hours and try to catch men who are soliciting consensual sex?  And if so, do they also pay female officers to patrol for the same thing among women?  This is a real threat to us?

David Bernstein has more.  Via TJIC.

Update:  A reader pointed out to me I had a fairly relevant passage in my novel BMOC, when the Senator is confronted with his $50,000 earmark nominally for a "women's consulting company" turned out to be directed at a house of prostitution [edited to remove the more raunchy terminology]:

Taking a deep
breath, [the Senator's aid] said, "Senator, there is a reason that this one is not going
away. I will spell it out: S-E-X. The press doesn't give a shit about a few billion dollars of waste. No one tunes in to the evening news if the
teaser is "˜Government pays too much for a bridge, news at eleven.' The Today Show doesn't interview the
contractors benefiting from a useless bridge."

"However, everybody and his dog will tune in if
the teaser is "˜Your tax dollars are funding call girls, film at eleven'. Jesus, do you really think the CBS Evening
News is going to turn down a chance to put hookers on the evening news? Not just tonight but day after day? Just watch "“ Dan Rather will be interviewing
hookers and Chris Mathews will be interviewing hookers and for God's sakes
Barbara Walters will probably have a weepy interview with a hooker."

"And you know
what?" Givens continued, his voice rising. "The whole act makes me sick. All
these media types are going to be piously turning up their nose at you and
those women, while at the same time making more money for themselves off those
prostitutes than those women ever made for themselves on their back. It's rank
hypocrisy but it's the facts of life in Washington,
and I shouldn't have to be explaining this to you."

"You guys in the
Senate can get away with a lot, as long as long as a) you don't get caught or
b) the scandal is so boring or complex that it won't sell newspapers. Hell, I saw a poll the other day that a
substantial percentage of Americans to this day don't understand or even
believe what Richard Nixon did wrong. But if you polled those same people, every freaking one of them would
say that they knew and believed that Bill Clinton [fooled around with] an intern. What's the difference? Sex. Bill Clinton was impeached and lost his law license, not because he did
or did not commit fraud with Whitewater Development Corp., but because he lied
about [sex with] a young girl."