Over at the Cato blog, David Boaz notes that U.S. Sen. Orin Hatch not only personally intervened, but went to great lengths to get R&B record producer Dallas Austin sprun from drug charges after he was caught attempted to enter the United Arab Emirates with cocaine.

Why did Hatch do it? Well, you’d like to think the good senator saw an injustice (Austin was facing four years in prison), and intervened to prevent a man from doing hard time for a victimless crime. You’d be wrong, of course. From the New York Times:

“The senator was one of a number of people who were very actively involved,” said Joe Reeder, the Washington lawyer, who, with an Atlanta colleague, Joel A. Katz, spent 10 days in Dubai working to secure Mr. Austin’s reprieve.

Mr. Katz, an entertainment lawyer, represents both Mr. Austin and the somewhat less musically successful Mr. Hatch, a singer and songwriter who has recorded religious-oriented albums. After hiring Mr. Katz’s firm, the senator last year took in $39,092 in income from music publishing, according to financial documents filed in May under the Ethics in Government Act.

So bully to Hatch for helping spring a man from an unjust prison sentence.

Now, about those 350,000 other Americans in prison for nonviolent drug crimes….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 8:12 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.