What a fucking crybaby. While this may be true in some cases, none of it has a goddamn thing to do with Polanski. Also, how broad is that brush you’re painting with?
No, it isn’t.
In an ordinary adversarial hearing, parties ask courts to unseal documents all the time. If the court refuses, because the document is declared “irrelevant”, that party cannot then argue an adverse inference that, because the document was not unsealed, it must actually be relevant!.
In particular, an ordinary court would not itself declare failure to produce a document it itself has declared irrelevant and unnecessary entitles the other party to some form of relief!
That it should is positively Kafka-esque.
I wish some bounty hunter would knock this scumbag out and drag him back to the US, like what was attempted on Ronnie Biggs, the train robber.
The court in Switzerland may not be refusing. What is happening is that a court in a completely different country is refusing and thus impacting the case in Switzerland.
Giving a victim the power to say “Don’t prosecute” creates problems:
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The victim may want to stop the prosecution for reasons that have nothing to do with the guilt of the accused. For example, to avoid media attention or public embarrassment.
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Society has an interest (apart from the interest of the victim) is seeing that the crime is punished, both to deter the perpetrator from future misconduct and to act as a general deterrent to others similarly situated. Otherwise you risk engendering the mindset, “Well yeah, it’s technically a crime, but it never gets prosecuted.”
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Allowing the victim to make the decision invites corruption of the system via cash payoffs to victims. In which event the wealthy are able to escape punishment.
Read the second paragraph. In this case, the court in the US based its decision on a declaration from the Swiss authorities that the document was irrelevant to the Swiss proceeding.
The allegation appears to be that the US Court should have ignored what the Swiss officials had to say about their own procedure and produced it anyway (?!).
I think you are assuming facts not in evidence here. I see where the Swiss originally declared that the document was irrelevant, and where the CA judge refused to unseal it, but I don’t see anything that says the second was the result of the first, other than your own contention.
What the fuck are you talking about? You asked “Can you think of any example of the Swiss government behaving ethically on any issue?” (the implication being Switzerland never does anything moral). To meet the challenge, I had to find a single example. I did. Do you honestly think I’ve got time to pose a full fucking survey of the international activities of Switzerland over the last century to placate some moron on the Internet?
Do you even know where you’re going with this anyway? What’s your point? Or are your posts just a product of random keyboard bashing with your mouth stick?
My point is that the Swiss are an especially nasty government.
(I wonder what the balance is between Swiss foreign aid going out and despots making secret deposits?)
The transcript has been sealed for 33 years. The judge only “noted that Swiss officials had ruled the transcripts were “irrelevant”” whereas “Polanski’s lawyer Chad Hummel argued Roger Gunson’s testimony could help Swiss authorities to decide whether or not to extradite Polanski”.
The US did not “base its decision” on it.
Again, one has to wonder what is so important in this transcript that it has remained sealed for 33 years and will continue to do so. Again I put it to you that it is because the transcript backs up Polanski’s reasoning for fleeing the US, which would harm the case for him being extradited to the US.
But until that transcript is unsealed we will never know.
Says the guy in Saudi Arabia trying to defend the views of the authorities in the US.
Why, because they took Nazi gold? Is that worse than the US systematically overthrowing the democratically elected governments of other countries because they won’t let us build airbases?
You do know what I am doing here, don’t you?
If I were Polanski I’d sell that place in Switzerland and get back to France ASAP and never leave again.
I’m wondering what your frame of reference is. Here is a list of UN Member States. Of the approx. 200 on the list, which ones are less nasty than Switzerland? What examples do you have of those nations acting against their self-interest?
Making a dick of yourself on the internet, apparently.
No, I would suppose what really makes them evil would be them handing children over to the Nazis. Then of course there is the keeping of the Jew’s gold for themselves. (They did fight a good fight against any return of any of that money.) Also the acres of money stolen by various dictators from poor people that has historically poured into Swiss banks. Then there is the Swiss policy of allowing their banks to help people hide their money from taxes, for a profit of course. Let us not discount their views toward crazy ideas like letting women vote. And of course we have their recent vote to prohibit minarets. (Does any other country in the world do that?)
Other than that, I have nothing much against the Swiss. Lovely people, great place.
As opposed to the thousands upon thousands of children killed by the likes of the US and UK in various wars?
Yes, as opposed to that.
Sorry, are you saying that the Swiss are less or more evil than war-mongering countries like the UK and US?