Fornicate Wim Wenders and Pedro Aldomovar too.
It just boggles my mind. Why should the rich and famous immune to prosecution? Would the French be in a tizzy about a house-painter being arrested and extradited?
Polanski drugged, raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl and then fled the country. Fuck him. I hope he gets what he deserves.
My wife’s first reaction was, “So, does he still get his award?”
I guess they’ll be mailing it to him…
My only objection to this is that they had the opportunity to put the collar on him for years, and only now do they nab him? As the article said, he openly traveled through Switzerland for 15 years and had a house there. What took them so long?
Listening to the BBC World Service this morning (thank you Sirius!) they suggested this might be caused by recent activity in the case. Polanski’s attorney sought to have the case closed, and failed. That might have pissed the LA DA off enough to make him seek to move the case to the front burner once more.
The Swiss have been under a ton of pressure to cooperate with the US Justice Department on tax issues. Maybe they thought that cooperating on the LA warrant would win them some brownie points.
Heh. From the linked NYTimes article:
That’s right asshole, our justice system (at its best) is blind and while the wheels of justice grind slowly, they grind exceedingly fine. I don’t know why Roman should get off with 40 odd days of incarceration for raping a 13 year old girl after feeding her illegal drugs. I don’t care if the case is thirty years old, the guy should pay his debt.
Maybe he can file it down to make a shank.
The plea bargain agreed to (by everyone but an out of control judge) included Polanski serving no more jail time.
It’s the judge’s prerogative to accept or not to accept plea bargains.
One of those out of control judges that thinks rape (much more than simple statutory rape in this case) deserves more than a little over a month in the slammer? As stated by Captain Amazing, they don’t have to accept a plea bargain.
A plea bargain rejected by the judge don’t mean shit. Exactly how does that mean the judge is “out of control”?
Presumably Mr Polanski will now get a new judge, who will get a chance to review the plea bargain and decide whether the punishment fits the crime; and Mr Polanski will be able to appeal that decision if he doesn’t like it. Why would the French be upset by that?
The claim of misconduct appears to rely on the claim that the former judge not only endorsed the plea bargain, but arranged it, and then reneged. The current judge has said that there seems to have been misconduct.
BUT HE’S AN ARTIST!!!
Yeah, you know who else was an artist? 
Cites please?
Sir Winston Churchill?
Here’s one, anyway.
“The film” being the recent documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
It’s irrelevant. Does anybody think a couple weeks in jail is sufficient for a guy who drugged up a little girl and anally raped her? Even if the judge was otherwise “out of control,” he was right to reject the plea.
I think that a lot of the sympathy comes from his childhood–you know, being Jewish, in Poland, in the 30s and 40s–and the later murder of his wife.
I still don’t agree with it; people do what they do, and that’s no reason he should escape prosecution. I can, however, see where those who wish for leniency are coming from. Despite being a famous director, a lot of his early life was shitty. Sympathy gets misplaced, gets misdirected, but sympathy isn’t inherently bad.
It’s a bad plea bargain IMHO. Polanski, a 44 year old man, enticed a 13 year old girl to Jack Nicholson’s house, gave her alcohol and barbiturates, and then raped and sodomized her. A 45 day incarceration (or whatever it is he has served) is not appropriate to the crime. Do you really think he has paid his debt? Really?