'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).