CLUELESS CAN BE TRAPPED BY MANDATORY SENTENCING

Q. I recently saw a movie on Court TV called "Guilt by Association." It
seemed to be a true story that took place in our area. All that the main
character did was take some phone messages for her boyfriend. She did not
know that he was dealing drugs, or that the messages were about drug deals.
But because of mandatory sentencing laws, she got 20 years.

Although I do not condone illegal drug use or drug dealing, I was wondering
how this could happen. The woman in the movie appeared to be totally
innocent to me.

Do you know if this was really based on a true story, and could something
like this really happen to an innocent person?

I didn't catch that movie myself, but I did find some summaries of the plot
online, and it sounds like a terrible injustice.

A woman named Susan Walker was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being
found guilty of involvement in her former boyfriend's drug operation.

The movie portrayed her as a complete innocent - she had no idea what he
was doing, let alone that she was helping him do it. But she was arrested
along with others involved in the drug ring and eventually convicted.

You ask if this could really happen to an innocent person. Sure. We have an
imperfect system. Sometimes a guilty person walks, and sometimes an
innocent person gets locked up.

Heck, if you were to believe the letters I get from prison, our
correctional facilities are full of innocent people!

But even those with a more cynical view of the situation would have to
admit that sometimes mistakes are made.

Ours is an adversary system. The prosecution puts on its case that the
defendant is guilty. The defense tries to poke holes in that case, and get
the judge or jury to view the facts from a different point of view. The
judge or jury then decides which version to believe.

In the movie, it appears the prosecution didn't have a whole lot of
evidence against the main character, but it apparently was enough. I read
in one of the plot summaries that other people who were actually involved
in the drug deals testified against Walker in exchange for lighter
sentences for themselves.

Now that does happen all the time. Most arrests end in plea bargains, not
trials. It works for the system, since there are just too many cases for
every one to be tried.

Plea bargains are a good deal for the guilty parties, since they can get
less time in prison if they plead guilty. And they're a good deal for the
prosecutors, since they can get convictions without going through trials.

As an added bonus, they can get evidence against defendants who won't plead
guilty.

You might wonder how the judge or jury could convict based on the testimony
of admitted drug dealers. It happens.

Sure, the defense can argue that the testimony should be rejected because
it came from unsavory characters out to save their own skins. But the
testimony is still evidence. It's up to the judge or jury to decide whether
it can be believed under the circumstances.

It appears the real villain in the movie was the mandatory sentencing law
that required the judge to send this woman to prison for 20 years. Such
laws take the discretion away from the judge and impose sometimes harsh
punishment on minor players.

The movie was promoted as being based on "true events" rather than one
particular person's actual story. Certainly there are many cases of real
people getting slammed by the mandatory minimums.

Kemba Smith was one of them in Virginia. She was a sophomore at Hampton
University when she acquired a boyfriend who turned out to be a drug dealer.

Smith appears to have been more involved in his business than "Susan
Walker." For example, she rented a car for him and carried money.

There was also evidence that he abused her and she was afraid to leave him.
She eventually pleaded guilty to charges, including conspiracy and lying to
the authorities.

And although she never actually handled any drugs, Smith was sentenced to
24 years in prison. She served six years until President Clinton commuted
her sentence in his final weeks in office.

The boyfriend was found shot to death before he could be tried.

I don't like mandatory minimum sentences because they impose the same
punishment no matter what the circumstances are. Within some parameters, it
should be up to judges to impose the sentence after considering all the
factors.

That's why we pay them the big bucks.