Law Careers can be ended even more easily by doing that. Just ask Marcia Clark.
Judge dismisses application by Geimer to dismiss charge against Polanski:
Bumped.
Actresses walk out of Cesars ceremony after Polanski wins top awards: Actresses walk out of 'French Oscars' after Roman Polanski wins top awards | CNN
Thanks for bumping this. I missed this thread back in 2017. Some of the posts have me shaking my head, particularly ZPG Zealot’s ridiculous claim that statutory rape wasn’t a big deal in the Seventies was either shrugged off or that pubescent girls who were brutally raped were painted as sluts.
Polanski, who is a talented, even brilliant director, should have spent a good chunk of that career behind bars. Kudos to the actresses who walked out.
Yes indeed.
It should be remembered that Polanski pled guilty to charges involving drugging and violating a very young girl, behaved pretty badly while out on bail pending sentencing, and then failed to show up for sentencing. Which pretty much means that it’s out of the hands of the victim at this point.
He has never been punished one iota for his actions. Living well in Europe isn’t punishment. He got away with rape, and with blowing off the criminal justice system of the United States.
And he probably never will be punished.
Unfortunately, some of Europe, and particularly France, has a high tolerance for this kind of shit. See the case of Gabrial Matzneff. Things really haven’t changed that much, although there are indications that change is finally coming.
Well, no. The DA played a bargaining game with him, then the Judge reneged after Polanski accepted the deal.
Gailey’s attorney arranged a plea bargain in which five of the six charges would be dismissed, and Polanski accepted.[145]
A*s a result of the plea bargain, Polanski pleaded guilty to the charge of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor”,[146][147] and was ordered to undergo 90 days of psychiatric evaluation at California Institution for Men at Chino.[148] Upon release from prison after 42 days, Polanski agreed to the plea bargain, his penalty to be time served along with probation. However, he learned afterward that the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, had told some friends that he was going to disregard the plea bargain and sentence Polanski to 50 years in prison:[147][149] “I’ll see this man never gets out of jail,” he told Polanski’s friend, screenwriter Howard E. Koch.[150] Gailey’s attorney confirmed the judge changed his mind after he met the judge in his chambers:
He was going to sentence Polanski, rather than to time served, to fifty years. What the judge did was outrageous. We had agreed to a plea bargain and the judge had approved it.[150][151]*
I can’t condone in any way what Polanski did, but those sort of plea deals were common back then. The DA offered a deal- Polanski accepted the deal- the judge had no business reneging on the deal and coming up with 50 years- which in 1977 was ridiculously high. Yes, the deal sounds crazy good, but in 1977 that sort of plea deal was normal. Not today, of course.
So “Bargaining games” is exactly what the State offered. I dont blame him for fleeing the nation after that.
However his crime is totally reprehensible.
No. But if the Judge hadnt gone back on the deal, it all would have been over and done, and as you said- 'waved away". Remember- 1977, not 2020.
(I realize this is from 2017, but I’m going to add my 2 cents anyway).
I get what you’re saying, but I feel impact statements are even less necessary when it’s the criminal’s family talking about how his or her life is now ruined, take pity, everyone has suffered enough, etc. I’m still furious over what Brock Turner’s dad said during the sentencing of his son. I understand the criminal’s family is impacted too, and in many cases they’ve suffered as well. Nothing they say is going to make the victim of their family feel any better, though. Maybe just saying they are sorry is passable, but jumping to the defense of the murderer/rapist/whatever just pisses me off.
Judges refusing to go along with plea deals are a risk that child rapists just have to accept.
I can’t believe that actual human beings are arguing that Polanski has suffered enough and should get a pass.
A person should not be sentenced to a lengthy period of incarceration without a full trial. If they waive their right to a trial.
When a judge feels a deal is unduly lenient, then they can of course reject it, but propriety demands that they inform the parties of that inclination and ask the accused if he wishes to withdraw.
Who said that? The law simply says that you can’t extradite a French (or German, or Japanese, etc) citizen, so you would (now) have to try him in France.
I am not saying that. No one is saying that.
That Plea deal was normal for 1977. If the judge had accepted it, we wouldnt be having this discussion.
Now, yes, here in 2020, that plea deal is way too good.
Aren’t judges required to approve a plea deal in the first place? Or is that just a memory artifact from one of the 307 police/lawyer shows out there?
They do have to approve it.
And although it would be absolutely wrong for a judge to renege on a deal he approved ( at least without offering the defendant the opportunity to withdraw his guilty pleas), I haven't even seen an accusation that it actually happened. I see lots of statements that the judge had told someone or another in a private conversation that he was going to sentence Polanski more harshly than the plea deal called for - and some saying that the victim's lawyer had arranged/approved the plea bargain. No transcripts regarding the judge agreeing to the deal, and I haven't seen anything from the prosecutor saying that the judge agreed.
If Polanski hadn’t skipped bail and become a fugitive, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. That’s all there is to it.
There are sealed transcripts from a deposition made by the prosecutor in the case. During one of the extradition cases, his lawyers asked for them to be made public but was refused.
There really is no good reason (within rubric of the particular case) for them not to be and the inference that they are highly unfavorable to the State is more or less irresistible.
I think that may be the material that both the Swiss and Polish courts cited when they refused extradition.
Yes.
If I had to venture a guess, the reason California doesn’t want them released is since they might reveal an institutional pattern of prosecutorial and judicial collusion in that era. Which would place other cases in jeopardy.
I know in England there was a culture of collusion and remarkably prejudicial behaviour in the criminal investigative & justice system at this time. Stuff which caused a great outcry in the 1990’s and led to reform.
I am not an expert, but from what I have read, N America had similar issues.
No, it’s not “bureaucratic nonsense” and “latitude towards rape”. It’s called due process.
Extradition means that a foreign country arrests someone in that country and hands them over to the extraditing country, even though the individual has not committed any breach of that foreign country’s laws. That’s a major state infringement of the individual’s liberty. Extradition is important, but the individual’s personal liberty has to be protected by due process to be fair.
France’s long-standing constitutional provision is that they won’t extradite a citizen. They see that as a basic constitutional safeguard. Instead, they say to the requesting country, “Bring the charges against the French citizen here, in the French courts, and we will try the case.” The California prosecutors have declined to do so. That’s not saying there’s a general French tolerance for rapists. It’s that the California prosecutors, for whatever reason, do not want to have the case tried in France. Their choice.
The Swiss and Polish cases are different. They both have found that the material filed by the US government in support of extradition is not complete, and they do not think it would be safe to extradite, not having the complete record of the case in front of them. Again, that’s on the California prosecutors. Why do they not want to file the complete record in open court in support of their application for extradition?
For forty years, liberals especially Hollywood liberals painted anyone who wanted Polanski to be punished for his crimes as sexually repressed religious anti-semitic rubes. They argued having sex with a 13 yo was perfectly acceptable in enlightened France and that we needed to educate ourselves. These same liberals knew what Weinstein and Cosby were doing and said nothing. If the MeToo movement is serious, they would demand guys like Seth McFarlane who literally joked about it in his Oscars monologue be cancelled for their silence.