Polanski falls for the old "We'd Like to Give You a Lifetime Achievement Award" Trick!

Cafe Society
101

Perhaps, but I don’t think it should be the sentence that would have been imposed 31 years ago. A few months perhaps, in recognition of his age. (And most people really don’t have the option of running to France and living openly and wealthily for many years when they commit a crime here; well, Ira Einhorn did admittedly, but he was running to save his ass and not due to a precedent*.)

*And just what the hell is it with France and extradition? If these were crimes of conscience it’s one thing, or crimes where the people seemed railroaded even, but one case is about a middle aged man drugging and raping a child, another about a man who all but admits he murdered his girlfriend and kept her body in his apartment for years [evidence overwhelming] yet they won’t return them to the U.S… WTF?

Would they like some more of our criminals perhaps? It’s probably a lot cheaper to buy them a ticket to Charles de Gaulle than to prosecute and imprison them.

Maybe the Swiss should offer Osama bin Laden a LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT FOR OUTSTANDING EXCELLENCE IN THE FIELD OF JIHADISM AWARD. An eight year manhunt resolved at last. (Strangely they gave sanctuary to escaped prisoner Timothy Leary and some other American refugees from justice.)

102

I don’t know much about the case, so tell me why his supporters believe he shouldn’t be brought to justice. And how legitimate are their reasons?

103

What the hell does age have to do with it? He raped a kid and fled the country. As far as I’m concerned the man should be shot.

104

I’ve merged BKReporter’s post into this thread because this question was already being discussed here.

105

Yes, his old age is his own fault. As someone posted earlier in the thread, it’s like the man who kills his parents and when the judge asks him why he should be lenient, he replies, “Your honor, I’m an orphan!”

106

So he trades 10 years in the prime of his life - fame, money, admiration, hot young chicks, the best wine and food in the world - for ten years at the end of his life.

Most people would take that trade: You can do your jail time now, when you’ve got everything going for you - or at the end of your life, when you can’t do much anyway.

ETA

During his “exile” (almost like Brer Rabbit and his laughing place - whatever you do, don’t send me to France!), Polanski continued to make films, continued to get rich - he has a second home in freaking Switzerland - continued to live the charmed life.

He can pay now.

107

I have yet to see anything to convince me he has been treated unfairly. So far, we have testimony that has not been refuted that he knowingly planned and took advantage of a 13 year old girl, that he took her alone, plied her with alcohol and drugs, intimidated and forced himself upon her, and had sex with her, despite her vocal protests at the time.

That is atrocious behavior. I don’t care if he is “reformed”, if he’s unlikely to do it again, if he only did it the one time. None of that mitigates the fact that he did it that one time, and deserves punishment for that action.

What about the “judicial impropriety”? I haven’t seen the documentary, so it’s difficult to evaluate that with what has been presented. So far, what has been presented has been that the prosecutor was willing to give and exceedingly lenient plea bargain on the grounds to protect the victim and victim’s family, and the judge was not happy with that result. Especially when it appeared that Polanski was not remorseful at all and was flaunting his freedom while still under consideration before the sentencing was carried out.

Add to that, Polanski decided to use his money and connections to evade justice. He has used the cover of French citizenship and careful avoidance of places with extradition agreements to prevent his being returned to the U.S. He has made special arrangements for other legal issues to similarly avoid the possibility of facing his due sentencing and punishment. Even after the U.S. courts have agreed there was possible judicial malfeasance and considered reevaluating his case, he refused to return to the U.S. to deal with his legal issues. He got permission to have his lawyers defend him in his absence in the civil suit his victim filed against him.

One could try to make the argument that the courts/judge had it out for him and thus he was justified to run, but that fall flat on its face because he has failed to come back when the judge in question is dead and the current courts seem prepared to show leniency in order to resolve the situation. He still would not return of his own free will to face his due punishment.

The victim wants the courts to drop the matter because the continued negative attention on her and her family. Well, guess what, that all rests squarely on Polanski’s shoulders. If he had faced up to his actions at the time, or even in the intervening decades, there would be no need for continued attention on this case or the victim. It is his fugative status that keeps it being an issue. Blame him, not the courts.

Also realize that she already got some undisclosed sum of money from him in the civil case, so she already has some measure of closure and retribution. Her personal matters may be solved (and far better than the original plea agreement), but that does not address the heart of the matter, which is the original crime is a crime against society, not just one person. And he has complicated matters with a further crime.

I have no sympathy for him in this matter. Sure, it’s saddening the things he suffered in his personal history, from childhood struggles and loss of parents, to the murder of his wife and children. But none of that has any bearing on the case at hand. He drugged and raped a girl. He did that, not Charles Manson, not Hitler and the NAZIs. Polanski did that.

And I don’t give a ratfuck that he’s a talented movie director. That has no bearing on the fact that he drugged and raped a 13 year old girl.

Personally, I’d like to see him do time for the original crime. I’d also want to see him slammed with additional charges for fleeing justice and flouting the law. Given the presumed judicial malfeasance, I could see granting him some leniency on those matters for avoiding being unfairly railroaded, but only by being duly considered in a court of law through the proper judicial process. And only some leniency, because he was given court review and the court has shown the willingness to reconsider the matter, and he has not stepped forward to resolve the matter but instead continued to live abroad.

And no, I don’t consider his self-chosen exile from America to be punishment. That was an active choice on his part to escape his responsibilities. So he couldn’t come to Hollywood and receive a prize in person. Boo hoo.

And I’m disappointed at the people coming forward to support him.

108

Sampiro said:

It’s a matter of sovereignty. France wants to protect its right to protect its citizens from prosecution abroad. France seems willing to conduct the trials in French courts, but not hand over citizens for trials in other countries. I am unclear how that kind of prosecution would work, under what authority, what laws, and what punishment system. For instance, the U.S. has the death penalty, but IIRC France does not, and would likely fight extradition on those grounds alone.

109

Yeah, i’ve always been very suspicious of the attention courts pay to things like Victim Impact Statements, especially when they come not just from the victim, but from all the victim’s family and friends. This tends to suggest that a victim of crime is more important, and the crime somehow deserves more severe punishment, if the victim is part of a large circle of family and friends. I don’t think we should evaluate crime and punishment that way.

Doesn’t matter, because in pleading guilty and reaching an agreement with the DA, Polanski made any statute of limitations irrelevant. As i understand it, the statute of limitations refers to the time that can pass between the commission of a crime and the initiation of court proceedings. Court proceedings against Polanski were initiated way back in the 1970s, and he pleaded guilty; the issue is simply that he fled to avoid the actual punishment phase of the proceedings.

Also, even if we leave aside the rape for a moment, i believe his flight from the jurisdiction is an ongoing crime. Does anyone know if that’s true?

But, for countries that refuse extradition under such circumstances, they don’t generally refuse any and all extradition to the United States. Instead, they generally only refuse in cases where the defendant has committed a crime that would leave him or her subject to the death penalty. I don’t believe that applies in Polanski’s case.

110

Emphasis mine:

As far as I’m concerned he could be jettisoned into space and shot with deer rifles. HOWEVER, I’m not the victim, and she wants it ended, has said so repeatedly for several years, and neither my life nor your life was made any worse by his actions so our personal concerns aren’t that important.

I see a 76 year old man being brought to the U.S. where a fortune of public monies will be spent to re-try him (because there’s no way they’re going to just plop him in prison- there will be a dump truck of briefs and motions filed) and if convicted he’ll be placed in a prison where the same public monies will pay a yearly fortune to house him. A
1- 76 year old
2- rich celebrity
3- who drugged and raped a minor
4- and who is a national of a foreign power
is somebody you can be pretty sure isn’t going to be placed in Gen-Pop. He’d be dead before teh door clanged. So, he’ll have to be housed with little short of bodyguards. And at 76 his health is not going to be getting any better.

So twixt the legal maneuvers, the housings, and the geriatric healthcare he’ll keeping will EASILY become several million dollars and it will be absorbed by a state so broke it’s taken to giving IOUs to its own employees.

I just don’t see the logic. It’s 100% punitive when the victim is alive and well and wants to get on with her life and is going to cost taxpayers millions that would be better spent by the French healthcare system.

111

Sampiro, you keep bringing up this point. I agree it would be better for the victim if this would stop impacting her life. Do you know what would also get this out of the news so she can move on? Putting him in prison like he deserves.

The fact that this is happening when he is old and sick is completely his decision. He could have come back at any point when he was younger and healthy but chose not to.

I usually get sick of people crying “protect the children” but for crying out loud this guy is a confessed child rapist. He does not get any sympathy from me.

112

Or from me; don’t think for a minute I like the fact he essentially got away with the crime. But I don’t think it benefits a single solitary person to imprison him, or harms a single solitary person to not imprison him, but harms many to imprison him (the tax payers, the victim [for trust me- I’ll wager dollars to doughnuts that far from the press going away {and how often really does it come up?} you in fact haven’t heard the beginning of the coverage of it when he appeals and the like]). Were the case not 31 years old and the victim not well adjusted by her own assessment I’d probably feel differently, but it is and she is and it would cost a fortune to bring justice that at most is going to be ice cold and unsatisfactory.

113

Sara Jane Olson did her time under similar circumstances.

114

Bolding Mine.

He didn’t get away with a crime unless we choose at this point to not make him pay for it and I think that is the point. We, theoretically, have a justice system that is supposed to treat everyone equally in the eyes of the law. We all know that’s not true, the rich can afford high priced lawyers and end up with sentences like being confined to their mansion as imprisonment. But by letting Polanski off we get to say right up front “If you are rich you can run away for X amount of years and then we’ll just write it off and move on.” To me that is undercutting the justice system and, I think, it harms everyone. It harms everyone by admitting out in the open rich people get preferential treatment in the justice system.

115

But they can. They do all the time.

I’m surprised how little anyone cares about the victims wishes not to have her face and his face scrawling under Nancy Grace’s smirking stupid face for six weeks over something that happened almost 3/4 of her life ago. In the 24/7 “see if you can spot the tabloid from the new show” climate this is a VERY reasonable and understandable wish; her life’s about to be majorly disrupted AGAIN.

Polanski is old, he’s going to be dead soon enough.

Nothing excuses what he did do remember his history. His mother was gassed in Bierkenau. Tex Watson and Susan Atkins held his pregnant wife down and stabbed her and the full term baby to death, they killed several of his best friends at the same time, it was a case that became world famous for its barbarism- that was his wife and child and their friends and then constantly for several years were in and out of the courts and on the news in California courtrooms where they sneered and laughed- none of that is his victim’s fault obviously, but the fact he was fucked up in the head in the 1970s just isn’t that inexplicable. (If Hitler and Manson murdering your relatives *in the same lifetime * doesn’t fuck you up what would? And if that doesn’t entitle you to some mercy when you’re old and harmless and your victim wants you gone anyway, then who would you have mercy for?

116

I’m completely befuddled by the Polanski apologists, too. I see this double-think here on the Dope, where any random thread reporting a rape or a child molester or a cat sat on fire on the news will garner dozens of replies expressing the Dopers’ wishes to kill and maim the perpetrator. But Roman Polanski rapes a 13-year-old girl, skips the country to avoid punishment, and there’s this little brigade going “Oh, well, he’s an old man, she’s forgiven him anyway, etc.” The only thing I can figure out is that because he’s rich and famous and an ARTISTE, that somehow in some people’s minds that exonerates his crimes.

So what if the victim forgave him? He’s been convicted of a crime and he should damn well serve his time. She can go declare it National Roman Polanski Forgiveness Month and it’d carry all the same legal weight as her forgiveness. I’m thrilled for her that she can forgive Polanski and carry on with her life. But Polanski deserves to serve his time for what he did.

As for the hardships in his life – so freaking what. Lots of people survived the Holocaust, and didn’t drug 13-year-olds and rape them. Lots of people have their loved ones brutally murdered and don’t go onto attack and violate innocents. He was cognizant enough of his actions not only to DRUG her, but to ask her whether she was on birth control, and then anally rape her when she couldn’t answer. Polanski knew exactly what he was doing! What now, everyone who’s pregnant wife is murdered gets a ‘ass-rape a 13-year-old and get out of jail free’ card?

And as someone more eloquent than myself put it, arguing that he shouldn’t serve time because he’s an old man now is like the guy who kills his parents and argues for leniency because he’s an orphan. It’s Roman Polanski’s own fault he fled from justice and that he’ll have to face it now when he’s old and weak.

I hope he rots in prison. I hope he dies in there alone and forgotten.

117

and that’s too bad.

I would hope that she would be left alone. Unfortunately we live in a world of tabloid reporters that have no problem putting a rape victims face up for their own gains. They disgust me also. I don’t see how letting him go is going to change any of that though. Instead of her picture scrolling with his during sentencing and any appeals it will be scrolling with commentaries of the way he was released.

Hopefully that will be soon, while he’s in prison.

That sure does sound like a lot of excuses. It had been more than 30 years since the holocaust and 9 years since his wife and daughter were murdered. In the time between the Manson murders and the rape he managed to function well enough to make 4.5 movies. I will concede that he was probably quite fucked up but I stop short of letting that be any excuse for raping a 13 year old.

Just so we remember what happened. Polanski fed a 13 year old booze and drugs (champagne and part of a quaalude.) Then while she was telling him no proceeded to rape and sodomize her.

Since he did it he skipped the country and has continued to live his life with no seeming remorse for what he did. Managing to make another 8.5 movies since.

I would love there to be a way to make him serve his time without the victim having to suffer any more but the only way I can see that happening is by him turning himself in and serving his time like the scum we all know he is. (I’m allowed to be judgmental seeing as how he is a convicted child rapist.)

118

There is no sentence good enough for him.

I respectfully agree to disagree with Sampiro and others who think that by letting him go is harming no one. It harms each and every one of us when a person who has been convicted of a crime by diminishing the legal system that this country was founded on.

On a m.u.c.h. smaller scale, I believe that the Paris Hilton’s of the world also diminish our legal system when they spent 84 minutes in “jail” and then released due to overcrowding. You know as well as I do that if that were Joe Schmoe, he would be serving his full sentence for DUI or possession or whatever. Only by their “celebrity” are they given special consideration. We in America are celebrity-obsessed.

It completely boggles my mind to think that we as a society should look the other way when sentencing a convicted rapist of a 13 year old girl just because he’s managed to mock our judicial system for 35 years.

119

Umm, could someone translate?

120

How could anyone defend this pedophile? He put his penis in a 13 year old girl’s anus and don’t forget that he gave her Quaaludes to “ease it in.”

Oh, but he’s a Famous Director! A creative arty French citizen! Celebrity Justice double standard to the rescue!

Would I get the same defense of character if I give drugs to a thirteen year old girl and enjoyed her tight virgin anus?

All of this should be shocking, and not worthy of mitigation. The academy award, the murder of his wife and his later wonderful family life are separate from the ANAL RAPE of a young child. He was convicted of this and fled justice.

Child molester, rapist, pedophile, Polanski. Same thing.