Katrina is given an unfair trial in which she has to face the judge barefoot in a brown prison smock, is imprisoned in a squalid, overcrowded Bangkok prison nicknamed the "Bangkok Hilton". There she meets another Australian woman, Mandy Engels (Joy Smithers), a heroin addict also imprisoned for drug trafficking. Mandy had used her brother, Billy (Noah Taylor), who has a profound intellectual disability, to carry her drugs as they passed through airport customs but the drugs were detected and both were sentenced to death for trafficking. As Katrina's case works its way through the courts they become friends, with Mandy teaching Katrina the ropes of prison life. Meanwhile, Richard Carlisle convinces Hal to take an active part in the case, pretending to be a lawyer from Carlisle's firm.