Beating a Drug Rap With High-Placed Friends

By
JOHN COCHRAN
July 20, 2006, 3:47 PM ET
2 min read

July 20, 2006 — -- Dallas Austin is a songwriter and music producer who has worked with Madonna, Janet Jackson, and other pop stars. Orrin Hatch is a conservative Republican senator from Utah who writes religious and patriotic songs.

Besides their musical talents, Hatch and Austin share the same entertainment lawyer, Joel Katz. A former staffer in Hatch's Senate office also works with that law firm. And when Austin got hit last month with a drugs charge in Dubai for carrying a little over a gram of cocaine, his lawyers called on Hatch and other powerful people to intervene with the country's rulers.

Hatch told ABC News, "Of course, I have a good relationship with the rulers of Dubai and have a tremendous respect for them."

U.S. officials believe that as many as a hundred Americans may be imprisoned in Mideast and Muslim countries, some of whom take a very hard line toward illegal drugs.

Dallas Austin's friends had seen the movie "Midnight Express" about a real-life American who was thrown in a Turkish prison for five years until he escaped. The harsh prison conditions depicted in the movie scared them.

But just hours after Austin was sentenced to four years, Dubai authorities released him, following appeals from Hatch and other VIPs. Hatch says, "I was very happy to be of some assistance and glad we were able to get him out because that could have been a disaster for him."

Hatch said he wanted to make sure "that this really brilliant young man ... didn't get stuck in a jail over there where things are really, really bad."

Attorney Richard Atkins told ABC News he has tried for years to get other Americans out of foreign jails, but he has never had a powerful ally like Orrin Hatch. "I'm afraid," said Atkins, "this is a one-time thing. If so, it's very unfair for one person to get the help of a very high level government official while the other people are languishing in jail."

To Hatch's supporters, such criticism proves that no good deed goes unpunished. To others, his intervention for Dallas Austin proves that if you get in trouble overseas, it helps to have expensive lawyers with connections to people in high places.