TV REVIEWS : ‘GETER’: FROM ’60 MINUTES’ TO CBS MOVIE

“60 Minutes” introduced Lenell Geter to most of the nation three years ago. At that time, the young black engineer was in a Texas prison, serving a life sentence for a 1982 armed robbery in what seemed to be a clear case of mistaken identity.

So the CBS movie “Guilty of Innocence: The Lenell Geter Story,” 9 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8), is a success story because it concludes with Geter’s eventual exoneration and release.

This Harold Gast-written, Richard T. Heffron-directed drama evokes the same feelings of outrage over Geter’s plight that “60 Minutes” did in following up local media stories. You watch in disbelief as the innocent Geter (Dorian Harewood) is first arrested, then convicted, then given the maximum sentence in a simply bizarre chronology.

In this account, Geter is victimized by the system and shoddy defense by his attorney, Ed Sigel (Dabney Coleman), who ultimately helps get Geter released, though, with assistance from Geter’s engineering colleagues, the NAACP and newspaper and TV exposure. Part of the “60 Minutes” segment that focused national attention on the case is re-enacted for tonight’s movie.

Harewood effectively conveys the mild, idealistic, highly religious Geter’s surface feelings of incredulity and frustration over his nightmarish predicament. But Geter’s character is not very well developed, and his motivations and ambivalent relationship with his attorney are rather a blur.

Beyond hints of racism, moreover, the story never attempts to explain why the prosecutors and Greenville, Tex., police seemed so determined to nail the unlikely Geter for a crime he didn’t commit.