<p>I believe that you answered your own question: the jails are full of sex offenders…Mr. Polanski is not in jail. Ok. actually he is at the moment. But he fled. And that, in and of itself, is a crime.</p>
<p>Do you really believe that the timing of his current arrest is incidental?</p>
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<p>Resistance to punishment is neither proof of guilt nor additional justification for the punishment already decided.</p>
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<p>I read her testimony. The unabridged version is worse than the excerpts. Good column, and I agree with Lopez.</p>
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<p>Well, then, his lawyers shouldn’t have tried to have gotten it dismissed; they filed papers within the past yea to try to get it dismissed. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say. Or don’t poke the bear and then complain when it bites you.</p>
<p>This is from a Salon article in Feb 2009: (emphasis mine)
"Bad art is supposed to be harmless, but the 2008 film “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” about the notorious child-sex case against the fugitive director, has become an absolute menace. **For months, lawyers for the filmmaker have been maneuvering to get the Los Angeles courts to dismiss Polanski’s 1978 conviction, based on supposed judicial misconduct uncovered in the documentary. ** On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could – by coming back and turning himself in.</p>
<p>**Espinoza was stating the obvious: Fugitives don’t get to dictate the terms of their case. Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, was welcome to return to America, surrender, and then petition the court as he wished. **Indeed, the judge even gave Polanski more than he deserved, saying that he might actually have a case. “There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct during the pendency of this case,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Other than that, he just needs to submit to the jurisdiction of the court.”</p>
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<p>It’s not being used as proof of guilt, though. He’s already admitted the guilt. There’s no question on that. Is it additional justification for the punishment already decided? Well, sure. I see no reason why additional punishment can’t be baked in. Sort of like contempt of court.</p>
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<p>Sex Case®: Now with Additional Punishment Baked Right In!</p>
<p>Resistance to punishment might not be proof of guilt. It is, though, an additional crime. For the rest of us, anyways. Why not for him?</p>
<p>Maybe it shouldn’t be a crime for the rest of us, either. No one wants to be punished. If you decided to punish me, is it my job to make it easier for you to do so? Particularly if we agreed upon a punishment already, and I accepted it, but then you changed your mind and decided to increase it?</p>
<p>I’m not defending Polanski specifically. I’m just making an abstract philosophical argument that I think is relevant. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that citizens have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. Which laws are unjust is very much a matter of debate.</p>
<p>By the way, if you can’t understand how the French could possibly defend this man in the name of “cultural differences”, imagine this: In a backwards country in Africa or the Middle East, a man has sex with another, consenting, adult man. Most of his countrymen are so disgusted by this that they sentence him to prison, or possibly death. He flees to America, where we feel that his treatment was barbaric. If his government demanded to have him back, we would want our government to refuse. And the people of his country would be perplexed and dismayed at our attitude. After all, how could we possibly justify not punishing a homosexual?</p>
<p>Believe me, I feel that American values are right and good, and also that Polanski was wrong. I just don’t think it’s too hard to figure out how another culture could handle a situation like Polanski’s very differently than we would.</p>
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<p>Not a lawyer, but my understanding was that a plea bargain is just that – “here’s what I suggest.” The judge is in no way obligated to take it. Just because Polanski got cold feet doesn’t mean that the judge did anything wrong.</p>
<p>Agreed. Again, I’m being abstractly philosophical, not legal or practical.</p>
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Emphasis added by me.</p>
<p>Mantori–before we use MLK to comment on resistance to “unjust” law, I think we should
look at his definitions of just and unjust. It’s too easy to say it’s “open to debate” what he meant. Do you think that he meant that laws against rape of a child fit his definition? Could possibly? Is there really any reason to bring MLK into this discussion?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone doubts his actual guilt. Isn’t Polanski the one who unremorsefully said something like “Normal sex is boring sex?” Not to mention that he pleaded guilty and paid off the victim (and I wouldn’t be surprised if he did so again recently to get her to say the things she is saying now). IMO he certainly deserves whatever comes his way. </p>
<p>I am sure a psychiatrist could have had a field day with this guy’s issues (parents were taken from him and killed in the Holocaust , wife and baby murdered by Charles Manson’s followers). He had a truly tragic life and I have no doubt it affected him in profound ways. But - there are lots of people who grew up with tragedies in their background who would be constitutionally incapable of such behavior. And history is filled with stories of creative geniuses who are greatly disturbed in their private lives (Michael Jackson comes to mind). However, Polanski’s history and the fact that he is an admittedly talented man should have nothing to do with the outcome of the case. </p>
<p>My understanding of the legal issues is that there is no dispute as to the fact of judicial mishandling. I think the judge in the case discussed his upcoming decision with an unrelated prosecutor, something that is not allowed. Not sure if that is what led to Polanksi and his lawyers knowing ahead of time what the scoop was going to be on his sentencing or what exactly the connection was. I also don’t think there is a dispute that the judge ignored the plea agreement due to outside pressure. However, from what I gather , a judge is under no obligation to follow the sentencing recommendations based on plea agreements (though they usually do). But I am not sure about how the fact that the judge made inappropriate contact with others about the case before making his sentencing decision could have influenced the outcome. Could there have been an appeal? A mistrial? I do think that running off should carry a stiff penalty as a deterrent .</p>
<p>Polanski’s lawyers approached US law enforcement this year to try to get them to drop the case against him. That raised his profile to the point where it seems a little strange that he would have taken the risk to go to the Zurich Film Festival. Although he has a house in Switzerland ( in Gstaad) he had always avoided high profile appearances at predictable times in places where there are extradition treaties. It just seems strange that he would have gone in this case, especially when his lawyers had just reopened the whole can of worms. Maybe he just got tired of all the hiding, or maybe he didn’t think they would come for him after all these years. Or perhaps there’s more to the story (from a legal perspective) than we know as far as what is currently going on behind the scenes.</p>
<p>But why now???</p>
<p>Not related to this case, but more generally.</p>
<p>I thought a plea bargain has the effect of making someone plead guilty to a lesser charge, with an agreed penalty, to avoid a trial on a more serious charge where the outcome is uncertain.</p>
<p>In other words, someone who is in fact innocent may plead guilty and take a couple of months on some charge, rather than face an extremely fallible system which may convict him of something else with say 20 years in prison.</p>
<p>A judge may have the right to ignore the plea bargain agreement, but it seems wrong to do so. Faced with the greater penalty, the accused may have preferred to go to trial with some chance of outright acquittal.</p>
<p>Regardless of the details of the case; regardless of the victim’s objections, the parent’s culpability or Polanski’s cultural contributions - if a person who confesses to a crime can get that crime forgiven by fleeing justice and staying away for 30 years, the message sent undermines the whole concept of accountability for one’s actions. Today’s 13-year-olds will be less safe if potential sexual predators see in the Polanski case a potential means to escape accountability.</p>
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<p>Of course not, and thanks for providing some additional context. I don’t for one moment think that rape laws have anything to do with MLK’s words. I was using them only to introduce the idea that, as right as we feel our values are, our sense of justice is dictated by our culture and is not universal. How could the French harbor this criminal? The answer isand I say this without irony or sarcasmbecause they’re French.</p>
<p>BYW, in response to a couple earlier questions in this thread - I saw a photo of the victim at age 13 in an article about the case. She looked her age - nothing more. Polanski had photographed her before and knew her and her mother - there was no confusion about her status. And he arranged with her mother to take the victim and another girl who was a friend of the victim to a double photo shoot, then prevailed upon the victim to uninvite her friend once the two had left the mother’s house. This was not a mistake or something that just “happened.” It was premeditated, planned out, choreographed, and implemented by a 44-year-old man solely for the purpose of incapacitating and raping a 13-year-old girl.</p>
<p>Years ago, I read something in a New Yorker profile that DID affect how I thought about this case. Someone – I don’t remember who – said, “If anyone is entitled to think that a 13-year-old is an adult, it’s Roman.”</p>
<p>Polanski was 7 years old when he escaped from the ghetto in Kracow without his parents. He lived and supported himself as a street urchin for six years, under German military occupation, a Jew subject to extermination and immediately identifiable by anyone who saw him naked. He wasn’t being hidden or being cared for by anyone. He was 13 when that period ended, and the Russian occupation began. I don’t think there’s any question that he was an adult, and had been for years. By the time he was 15, he was employed as a radio announcer and actor. </p>
<p>Let me hasten to add that I find his attraction to underage girls creepy. (This was not the only underage girl with whom he was linked, the most famous of whom was 14-year-old Nasstasja Kinski. And I believe Sharon Tate was in her late teens, and Polanski in his mid-30s, when they got together.) And I don’t like the details of this case at all. I think Polanski deserves punishment, but not necessarily the flaying many people call for.</p>
<p>A couple other points of interest on the cultural relativity front:</p>
<p>The definition of adulthood is certainly a cultural thing, especially as applied to adolescents. Jewish law makes women sui juris as adults at age 12. I believe that in much of Europe, prior to the late 19th century, people were treated as adults for legal purposes as young as 8. And even today any number of states permit 14-year-olds to marry (with parental or judicial permission, of course).</p>
<p>When Mick Jagger sang, in 1969 (“Stray Cat Blues”), about having sex with a 15-year-old homeless groupie, did anyone think he was making it up? Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical “Almost Famous” had rock musicians (and roadies) having sex with mid-teen groupies as commonly accepted, too, in the early '70s. Public views on this have hardened a lot as the Baby Boomers have moved from being teenagers to the parents of teenagers.</p>
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<p>I would agree except for the drugging. That’s what pushes it over the edge for me. I think a little flaying is probably appropriate. I do question whether it does any good all these years later, though. I don’t think anyone is out there raping and molesting because they saw Roman Polanski get away with it, any more than a murderer studies the ramifications of his state’s capital punishment laws before deciding whether to kill someone. Any deterrent effect of potential punishment for “crimes of passion” (as they were once quaintly called) has long since been disproved.</p>