Is this situation likely in USA ?

Yes, it is really thad bad. The US justice system smells (even more than the Dutch one) with:
- juries that are easy to manipulate
- judging people to life sentences based on circumstantial evidence
- minimum punishments which leave no room for softening circumstances
- sentencing mentally retarded people like they were normal people
- the non-existence of 'reason' (people who sue a supermarket because they trip over a banana they dropped on the floor themselves have actually won cases! this is no urban legend!)

Check out www.famm.org (it's the organization mentioned in the movie) for more information about the issue addressed in this movie and try to help! The more people complain the bigger the chance of change will be!

Happens all the time. Our totally corrupt congressmen are paid by the prison industry to pass these laws and they go with the money and millions of american citizens have thereby had their lives ruined in the last 20 years.

I hate congress. Every one of those monsters is in the business of selling his/her vote.

Yes, this actually happens in the states all the time... just like the movie said. Before i saw this movie on tv, i had heard that it happened to someone else too (a radio talk show host). I found this movie to be very accurate and realistic (unlike a lot of hollywood movies). I had also heard of Clinton commuting all those sentences but at the time, i didn't really understand much about mandatory minimums, the drug war etc. But now after watching this movie, it definitely clarified things for me. Very educative and informative movie. But It was just scary and depressing.

Yes it can and it did. Everything in this movie is true.

Tomorrow's just your future yesterday!

I saw this film on TV the other night! It was scary indeed! But why do the American people accept these laws?! Imo it is absolutely horrendous that (like in this movie and if this is indeed true) some "real" criminals can get their sentences heavily shortened just because they put the blame on other people (often marginally involved or totally innocent) accused in the case. Do not the courts demand any evidence evaluation at all!

Men suffer far more than women in these circumstances. This movie gets us to feel sympathy for such women, but what about the 100s of thousands of men incarcerated under the same circumstances? They are not being released. Nobody is feeling sorry for them. Nobody is saying: "Oh poor so-and-so, it's not his fault, and his children need him".

This is just another amongst thousands and thousands of examples in America today of where there is a double-standard in gender that favours women. I, for one, am getting sick of it, and I know a lot of other men are too. And I put it to you, that is one reason Hillary lost the Democratic race last month -- men across America are growing fed up with women's affirmative action, and with the whole pro-female anti-male bias you see everywhere you look, not the least of which is in the media. Am I the only one disgusted by all these TV commercials nowadays that show men as bumbling fools alongside some women who comes off slick, confident, intelligent and superior to him?

Gimme a break.

Look at this article today on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/06/12/heroes.lecroy/index.html
This woman was sentenced to 55 years, under the same "guilt-by-association" thing as the movie, but the sentence was eventually reduced, and even then she only served a tiny portion of that reduced sentence.

And how much you want to bet that it was simply because of her gender? Had she been a man, you want a bet that he would still be in jail today?