So, the Swiss police have arrested Roman Polanski-who is wanted in LA, on a 31 year old warrant. My question: how do you prosecute a 31 year old case? People’s ememories tend to fade a bit, and 31 year is a long time. How can a jury be expected to deal with this? I expect this thing will turn into a mistrial-I just cannot see how any witnesses can recall events accurately enough, for a conviction.
He doesn’t have to be tried. He was already convicted (pled guilty) 30 years ago. He fled from his sentencing, not from trial.
If Polanski hadn’t pled guilty through a plea deal and there was a cooperating victim/witnesses, state rules of evidence (in this case, California) generally allow someone who is testifying to have their memory “refreshed” through any kind of writing. For instance, if the victim was testifying about the sexual assault and couldn’t remember all of the details or key details, then the prosecutor could ask the victim if she made a statement to police, lay the foundation for it, ask permission to approach her, and have her read the relevant portion of the police report to herself. When she is done reading, the prosecutor can ask that particular question again that she couldn’t quite remember the details and the victim could use whatever information she told police originally to answer if she agreed with it now.
In this case, there was apparently a civil suit that followed also which was apparently settled out-of-court. However, if there were any depositions of the victim, witnesses, or Polanski himself, they could also be used to refresh witness recollections or to impeach the particular people testifying with their individual depositions should they be inconsistent.
Yup, what he said. Trial is ancient history.
It would be cool if they made him serve a 5 year sentence or so.
Drugged and raped a 13 year old.
This is the guy who gets standing ovations at Academy Awards shows, isn’t it?
He hasn’t been to an Acadaemy Awards show in quite some time, so I don’t think so.
And this is something he can certainly expect to be tried for - it is a crime that has persisted until, well, now.
I thought they had a video of him and he got one. Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe you’re thinking of a European awards show?
Despite being found guilty of rape of a 13 year old, he received a Standing Ovation and an Academy Award in 2002. He was not at the ceremony.
I should say that he plead guilty to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
He did win an Academy Award for Best Director for 2001’s The Pianist. He did not appear at the ceremony, of course. Harrison Ford (the presenter) accepted the award on his behalf, and I don’t remember a Standing O (though there was obviously some applause–he did win, after all).
Polanski’s case is pretty much textbook “rich white guy gets special treatment.”
There is a ton of misinformation about the case on these forums, too, for example:
-
This wasn’t a case of a promiscuous 13 year old in the 70s who did some drugs and fucked a famous Hollywood director. He lured her to a private residence ostensibly to do a photo shoot, he drugged her and then raped her despite her repeated protests. Let’s not imagine this was just an “age of consent” issue, it was completely forced sex, not just simply a violation of age of consent laws that many view as arbitrary. Any non-rich, non-famous guy in America would have been charged and most likely convicted of rape (or whatever the crime is called in the respective state); not a relatively “minor” offense like the violation of age of consent laws but a true, serious, felony-level rape conviction that would have meant many years incarceration.
-
Polanski entered a plea of guilty as part of a plea bargain. For non-Americans this is how something like 90% of criminal cases end up, most of the time the accused is guilty, most of the time the accused has an attorney that advises them they will not win at trial, and most of the time they cut a deal for a reduction in sentence in exchange for pleading guilty and not wasting the public’s time and money with a trial.
-
The original deal would have left Polanski with something like virtually no time incarceration, at all. It was a sweetheart deal you would never see offered to a lower middle class guy, and certainly not to a non-white (if a black man committed this crime he’d probably still be in prison to this very day–there was a rape case just a few years ago near where I live in which two black men in their 20s received almost 100 year sentences for rape.)
-
Where things get controversial is the judge was a showman and wanted a lot of attention. The judge also made it clear he wasn’t going to go along with the plea deal (judges do not have to accept a plea agreement, and I think most neutral observers would say the plea agreement in question was a miscarriage of justice and made a mockery of the concept of equal application of the laws, a judge could not in good conscience accept it.) Where things get problematic is how the judge went about things, he get the media involved, he basically became too involved in the case in a system in which the judge is supposed to be impartial. He also made Polanski stay in some sort of facility (I’m not clear on whether it was a high-security mental hospital or a prison–but either way my impression is it was a rough place) and Polanski most likely fled the country when he was out on temporary release because he couldn’t cut it in a rough place filled with violent criminals (of which he was one, of course, but I doubt he sees himself that way.)
Most likely if it was any non-famous, non-upper class defendant who had a judge behave like this they probably could have drug out an appeals process and received a new sentencing but I very seriously doubt any state court in the United States would sentence a man who raped a 13 year old after drugging her to any sentence that didn’t involve prison time.
Finally, I wonder why people are so concerned about how you prosecute a 31 year old case. How many people were up in arms supporting Byron de la Beckwith when he was convicted at trial some 30+ years after murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers?
It wasn’t just rich white guy treatment, but Hollywood celebrity treatment, which is another class unto itself.
Plus, I think there was (and still is) some misplaced public sympathy because of the murder of his wife.
It would not be for rape. I think it would have to do with making Chinatown, the Pianist and other movies like that.
Martin, if the original crime was indeed so heinous (as opposed to both parties getting stoned off their faces and doing something they shouldn’t do - which rightfully is a crime for an adult) then why does the “victim” say that Polanski should do no jail time?
Many commentators and Hwd types have been glossing over this. They don’t want to confront the reality that a man they view as an eminence grise was actually as brutal as any street thug.
I think it really is easy to underestimate how genuinely traumatic it must’ve been to not only lose his wife and unborn child that way (beyond gruesome), but also to have it be a spectacle in the media, with all the personal and graphic details in every media outlet in the country. Losing my spouse would be unbearable enough to me, but to deal with the grief and incriminations so publicly would be a strain on anyone’s constitution.
So I don’t think any sympathy towards what he suffered is misplaced at all. Does that justify his behavior? Does that excuse his actions? No, on both counts. Should whatever coping strategy he resorted to (alcohol, drugs, hedonism, amorality, etc.) to deal with the loss act as a mitigating factor in any way? I’d say No, but let him tell it to the judge. It’d be a tough sell, especially after all these years and very little evidence of public regret, but his most ardent defenders think this is an argument worth making, so let him make it if he wants and see how it plays.
She wants the case to go away because it revives old trauma every time it resurfaces. She’s a middle aged, respectable family woman who wants to shed the stigma of “rape victim”. Society has an interest in punishing rapists, though, so her opinions are hardly the final verdict.
Possibly because the victim (no scare quotes necessary) is tired of hearing about how she destroyed Polanski’s filmmaking career, or simply wants to put all of this behind her, or is embarrassed/ashamed about the whole thing, or joined some sort of religious sect that believes in 100% forgiveness for all things, or… I don’t know. I could think of many legitimate explanations, besides for “it really was consensual after all.” (Which, legally it wasn’t, since the girl was 13 at the time.)
I don’t think that the victim’s opinion about whether Polanski should do jail time is really that relevant. Particularly in a case like rape, I am sure there are a lot of victims that, out of embarrassment or shame or some other reason, don’t want to press charges, but that shouldn’t be a consideration in whether the rapist is punished or not. You do the crime, you do the time.