Pubdate: Wed, 13 Mar 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Section: Arts
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Neil Genzlinger
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

  'GUILT BY ASSOCIATION'

Was He More Than Mr. Right? No, Worse Than Misdemeanor

Everybody's getting into the original-movie act. Last weekend it was ESPN 
with "A Season on the Brink," and tonight Court TV offers its first 
original film, "Guilt by Association," a well-intentioned if heavy-handed 
effort to highlight inequities in the mandatory-sentencing laws of the 
Reagan years. Members of Congress, prepare for a barrage of e-mail protests.

Mercedes Ruehl gives her usual solid performance, this time as a woman who 
goes to prison because her boyfriend was involved in a marijuana ring. Ms. 
Ruehl's character, Susan, is a single mother of two who finds the seemingly 
ideal guy in Russell (Alex Carter) but doesn't realize until too late that 
he is involved with drugs.

When the police arrest him and his accomplices, Susan becomes a victim of 
laws that label those with even tangential involvement as co-conspirators. 
Innocuous phone messages she took for Russell, the gym bag she innocently 
delivered to him and assorted other actions become crimes. She is further 
damaged because the law encourages members of a drug conspiracy to rat on 
each other to get lesser sentences; knowing nothing, she has no information 
to trade.

The severe laws that the movie describes were passed in the midst of the 
1980's crack epidemic. They impose mandatory prison sentences, taking 
discretion away from judges. Advocacy groups have been saying for years 
that the laws have had the effect of imprisoning wives and girlfriends of 
drug dealers in alarming numbers, shattering families in the process.

The film makes these points perhaps too bluntly. Susan is a saint and 
obviously innocent; the prosecutor who sends her to prison is heartlessly 
odious. Things are probably rarely so clear in real life. And if they were, 
wouldn't the jury be as outraged as we viewers are?

But the film conveniently doesn't take us to the jury room. It's too busy 
making its point. The script, by Alan Hines, whacks us with it repeatedly, 
often in thudding dialogue.

"We are buried alive in this hell hole and nobody gives a damn," Susan 
tells a fellow inmate.

The pal responds, "Because nobody knows."

Susan continues, "Boy, people in this country had better wake up, because 
if this can happen to me, it can happen to anybody."

If technology allowed it, she would leap out of the television, grab the 
viewer by the collar and yell, "So write to your senator!"

That said, Court TV deserves credit for using its original-film soapbox to 
try to fix something that is clearly broken.

In our scandal-and-crime-addicted age, imagine the other directions it 
could have taken.

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

Court TV, tonight at 9 Anne Carlucci and Jean Bureau, executive producers; 
Graeme Campbell, director; Alan Hines, writer; Mary Silverman, Lynne Kirby 
and Rosalie Muskatt, executives in charge of movie development for Court TV.

WITH: Mercedes Ruehl (Susan), Alex Carter (Russell), Alberta Watson (Angie) 
and Karen Glave (Roxanne).
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager