Maybe this was a special situation because this was the "80's purge", but somethign doesn't seem right. Maybe its because we don't know very much about what her brother actually did (not shoudl we after all), and there might be something there that lended itself to the WT feelign it was in a bind.
I do not believe someone could do this now a days. It would be nice, but I think they wised up on it.