Entertainment For Lively Minds
Roman Polanski
Posted by Johan on 27 September 2009 - 10:07pm.
So it looks like Roman Polanski may finally have to face the music for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8277176.stm
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. And yet the reported reaction of various French politicians and others appears to be shock, concern, outrage.
Why? Should the fact that he is a talented film director mean that he shouldn't be sentenced for what he did? Of course it doesn't.
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Makes me wonder.
When's Bill Wyman going to be strung up by the knackers for shagging Mandy Smith when she was 13? It's on public record. Is there a statute of limitations in place?
The argument from the French here seems to be :
"He's had a lot of trauma in his life, it's wrong to add more".
I don't agree with it.
And I'm with lennylaw above, too.
Easy to take the moral high ground in cases like this but,
is justice really going to be served here? I don't know the ins and outs of the original case so to speak but from what I read Polanski pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain which the judge then reneged on, so he legged it. The victim reportedly does not want it dragged up again and extradition (which is far from a clear-cut outcome) will be challenged in the courts.
This case reeks of someone somewhere trying to make a name for themselves, with the only beneficiaries being the lawyers. Millions of dollars will be expended pursuing this high profile case while thousands of children in America are being abused right now.
It just seems to me that there is another agenda at work here.
I don't care about the "moral high ground"
Are you saying that because it was all a long time ago we should let bygones be bygones ?
If the judge had offered a plea bargain, why isn't that recorded in the legal system ?
I think the plea bargain is recorded
given that the original charges were dropped and a lesser charge substituted. There is pretty comprehensive coverage on Wikipedia. Apparently the girl involved petitioned the court in January of this year to have the charges dropped, and has gone on record as saying that he has effectively paid the price for what he did over the last 30 years, and needs to be forgiven.
Clearly he was guilty of a pretty hideous act - no-one is denying that least of all Polanski I think. Maybe there was a psychiatric defence, maybe not. The point now is what interest is served by the present extradition request, particularly given that the victim does not want an further action taken? I suspect someone somewhere is running for office.
Its against the law
and unarguably so. And legal systems cannot allow the victims to choose the sentence or punishment as it would be inconsistent and lead to chaos. Sentences are not just about the individual being punished, but around a consistent and predictable response to crimes.
He shouldn't have done it. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be in this position now.
If the Los Angeles authorities...
...want to go round and rigorously prosecute anyone involved in this kind of reprehensible behaviour thirty years ago then they'll probably scoop up quite a few of our good old rock heroes as well thousands of non-headline grabbing members of the public. And Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive, isn't he? And Jimmy Page and David Bowie and many others, whose behaviour during the mid-70s probably didn't involve the checking of drivers' licences. And have they talked to "good old" Jack Nicholson under whose roof this offence took place?
Probably so...
... but the Polanski case had got through the legal system and has been sitting unfinished for 30 years since he became a fugitive.
As far as I know, this was the only one from the possibilities you mention that made it to trial - I don't imagine it was the only one that could have made it to trial, though.
So if you can't prosecute all
you shouldn't bother at all?
Thought experiment
It's brought to the attention of the Swiss authorities that one Roman Wolowski, a retired spot welder, is believed to be in their country.
Thirty-two years ago, Wolowski was indicted for rape in the United States, with the charge reduced to unlawful sex with a minor.
The alleged victim, now aged 45 (which is older than Wolowski was when the incident occurred), has "moved on" and has no interest in the case being pursued. Since 2003 she has issued three separate statements making her position quite clear.
Wolowski, now aged 76, is a French citizen who has not set foot on U.S. territory since he left the country - quite legally; his passport was not withdrawn and no restrictions were placed on his movements - in 1978.
His only previous or subsequent brush with the law was not as a criminal but as an indirect victim; his wife was savagely murdered in 1969.
But the United States, 32 years and 7 changes in administration later, still wants to throw the book at him. Spot welders have to set an example, you see.
Yeah, I can really see Interpol pulling out all the stops for that one, can't you?
And it's not as if Switzerland....
...was sitting on most of the plundered wealth of Africa, is it?
Most wealth
is plundered. At some point.
debatable
rather a sweeping statement there.
In context to countries
its not that debatable. There is normally an indigenous civilisation that got the raw end of the deal or a strata of society that didn't win the land grab because they didn't have an army or weapons. Can't think of an example where that's not the case (but I am no expert).
Or indeed
gold from 6m people of similar origin to our spot welder
Well
I can see that a famous person, who is also infamously known for a crime that has gone unpunished, is always going to be more likely to be caught than someone who is not famous. The spot welder, I imagine, has kept a lower profile and hasn't turned up to a widely publicised award ceremony to collect a lifetime achievement of welds award.
But, regardless of the correctness or otherwise of Interpol chasing a famous person when they wouldn't a low profile spot welder, he did the crime. It was an unpleasant crime so its difficult to justify letting him get on with his life uninterrupted as it would set a precedent of keep you head down for 30 years or so and you'll be OK.
Uninterrupted?
The director of Chinatown - surely on everyone's list of the top ten films of the 1970s - hasn't been able to set foot in Hollywood for over thirty years. If that's not a de facto blacklisting, I don't know what is.
My impression is that the American authorities are trying to make Polanski pay for the inadequacies, ambiguities and inconsistencies of their legal system (which is now, by all accounts, even more outrageously unjust - for both complainants and defendants - than it was 32 years ago.
And now that they've finally put Phil Spector away, they may be trying their luck again with Polanski, hoping that they're on a roll.
I also suspect a good dollop of xenophobia at work here, too, since Polanski is the archetypal "spit-European". If, following the Manson case, he'd been declared as "America's Most Loved Tragic Widower" - as I'm convinced any natchal-bone major Hollywood player would have (see the recent sympathy bordering on gushing for John Travolta, with the media aiming all their Scientology barbs at Tom Cruise) - then something tells me this whole affair would have been brushed under the carpet sharpish at the time.
For someone "de facto blacklisted"
he seems to have a remarkable amount of access to Hollywood's stars, distribution and production houses, etc....
Frantic (1998) - Harrison Ford, Warner Brothers
The Ninth Gate (1999) - Johnny Depp, Artisan Entertainment
The Pianist (2002) - Adrien Brody
Oliver Twist (2005) - Ben Kingsley, Sony Pictures Entertainment
The Ghost (2010) - Pierce Brosnan, Ewan McGregor, Summit International
He's not blacklisted from Hollywood, he's legally unable to go to the physical place. Sure, it will have affected him, but it's not a ban, nor tantamount to one.
"Let's have lunch"
Entire Hollywood careers hinge on being able to say those three words. And he can't. That, to me, defines tantamount.
Tantamount
to inconvenience, maybe even a big inconvenience sure, but not a blacklist.
I'd guess being an internationally-renowned director with a proven ability to make money can offset a slight tardiness to the luncheon table.
Polanski's conviction...
...delayed Pirates, but otherwise his career has hardly suffered at all. In fact he's been incredibly lucky to stay in work and in favour, having helmed flops in the 1980s and 1990s and only really redeeming himself with The Pianist in 2002.
Yet his biggest successes
were Rosemary's Baby and, for his last Hollywood outing before skipping, Chinatown, for which he got his one and only Oscar nomination until The Pianist, 25 years later. He was a pariah in Hollywood for virtually all that time.
"Polanski. Are you kidding me? Poison in this town. Kicking up all that fuss at Jack's house. Who's he think he is? Too cheap to pay the goddam girl off. The hell with him."
(My apologies for being so cynical, but when it comes to the airing or laundering of Hollywood's dirty washing, as the case may be, I'm afraid I am. I blame that Kenneth Anger, me.)
No, that's wrong.
He was lauded for Tess in 1980, and was Oscar-nominated for it. Plus, his friends in Hollywood are legion, not least of them is Jack Nicholson who has been vocal in his support of Polanski.
If you want the reason that Polanski was less busy (not a pariah, note, just less active) in the post-Tess period you need to look at the figures for Pirates and Frantic, both of which lost money.
There is also the minor point...
that he's not a very good film director.
Thanks for the correction. Another theory blown out of the water.
You're a gent,
Mr V.
Facts is facts
Especially when I make them up.
An
objective fact, in fact.
I think that's stretching the meaning of tantamount too far
He's had plenty work from major studios, unlike the previously blacklisted "reds".
Tantamount = "amount to as much, equivalent". 4 or 5 films from major studios, A-list talent involved ?
Not really the same as being prevented from working, is it ?
Where "from" a major studio means "only distributed by"
Tess, for example was an Anglo-French co-production, distributed by Columbia. The Pianist was even more exotic - it was Anglo-Franco-Germano-Polish (distributed by Focus Features, a Universal offshoot). That means their budgets were a fraction of what Hollywood productions would have had at their disposal.
And, let's face it, when it comes to being an A-list player, Adrien Brody isn't exactly Jack Nicholson, is he?
I'm not for one second claiming that Polanski has suffered any terrible torments, or condoning what he did all that time ago. I'm just taking issue with the suggestion that his life and career weren't affected by his exile, because it's demonstrably inaccurate.
The Seventies was a particularly bad time for a director in Hollywood to screw up. Just ask Peter Bogdanovich.
We have found the middle ground
I agree that his exile had an effect but to be anything like a blacklist, the studios would not have had anything to do with him - but they did.
It goes without saying
that his career was affected by his exile, but it didn't suffer and anyway, putting up with a few minor slings and arrows is a long, long way away from a 'de facto blacklisting'. Bearing in mind his Oscar nomination for Tess came a matter of months after he skipped the country, Hollywood can't have been that bothered, and thinking about the subject matter of Tess, I wonder if anybody was *at all* bothered.
So, yes, 'affected' and no, not 'uninterrupted' by any strict definition of the word, but in the context of someone who has been convicted of drugging and sodomising a child, pretty much uninterrupted, I'd say. As in, not short of creature comforts. Doing okay considering. Mustn't grumble.
Talking about being "a long, long way off" the mark
He wasn't convicted of drugging or sodomising a child. He was only indicted by a grand jury - in other words, sent for trial - on those charges (although "drugging" implies the spiking of drinks or forceful administration, when actually he just offered her a third of a Quaalude, which she took of her own accord). He pleaded guilty to the underage-sex charge. This was accepted by the D.A., but the judge then began to show signs of wanting to backtrack and throw the book at him, at which point Polanski headed for LAX.
Since you're being quite a stickler for accuracy - which I applaud, eh - I think it's important to be clear about the facts of the case. And the fact is he was not convicted of drugging or sodomising the girl, because those charges were dropped.
He's lucky
...he has you to defend his good name.
Careful
I might do Gary Glitter next.
You may want
to rephrase that, Archie :-)
I think...
...that if you drug and anally rape a 13-year-old girl, like Polanski did, then you should be prosecuted.
But then I am a bit old-fashioned.
we've all done it....
Oh wait, no we haven't.
Bad Polanski. Yes, you lost your fit wife in horrific circumstances. That is no excuse.
Hard to feel sorry
..for the silly old git.He should have taken his lumps at the time. Assaulting a 13 yr old can hardly be excused by the trauma of his wife´s death.
If you can't do the time
...don't do the crime
It's a bit of a Ronnie Biggs situation:
I suspect America is (as we were with Biggs) wazzed off that the man has effectively snubbed his nose at justice for 30 odd years.
My take on it is clear: if it's illegal then you're not absolved because others haven't been caught and/or prosecuted; as long as your punishment is consistent with other offenders' you should accept it; whether you've had a tough life or an easy one, you're equal in front of the law.
Whether the 13 year old girl was willing (as claimed) or not, a 40 year old man should have known better. I think the real debate is why another country felt it should shelter him for 30 years.
BBC4 showed this documentary
BBC4 showed this documentary last year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski:_Wanted_and_Desired
which outlines the irregularities in the judge on the original case. His guilt is on record. The apparent collusion between the prosecution and the judge as well as the court not going to honour Polanski's plea bargain is what triggered him to leave the US.
It's a fascinating documentary. Nobody would want the life of Roman Polanski.
The apparent collusion between the prosecution and Judge
is well documented and should have led to a mistrial. Whether the state would (or should) have re-tried Polanski is another matter.
Well they couldn't run a re-trial
as the accused had relocated out of the US.
Actually they could have ...
under the terms of their extradition treaty with France, requested the French authorities to try him at any time - either a re-trial of the original charges or on the fleeing justice type thing (a lawyer writes).
Isn't it interesting to note that under this US/French extradition treaty the French cannot under any circumstances be obliged to extradite any of their own citizens to the USA.
Under the US/UK treaty the US can demand that we send across any UK citizen that the US suspects of a crime without the requirement that the US authorities produce any actual evidence of a crime ... BUT on the other hand the UK authorities must produce acceptable evidence to the US courts in the reverse situation.
I suggest that the Massive check out the following website highlighting the case of Gary McKinnon, make a donation, and get some music http://www.londontv.net/freegarymckinnon.html
Agree on the extradition situation
and also that Gary McKinnon poses no threat whatsoever.
The major difference is that Polanski had been tried under a recognised legal system and was found guilty. There is a recognised appeal process but he chose to scarper halfway through his psychological assessments which he had been trusted to complete without overt restrictions on his whereabouts. Why would they seek a re-trial?
I was just pointing out in response to your previous post that
if there had been any suggestion of impropriety in the original trial the US could have still opted for a re-trial even though he was in France.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Polanski, but as I said above I suspect the current actions are because someone is going to be running for office.
I don't read it as simple as that
If there was impropriety in the trial, he should have gone back and argued that case.
Also, the US have been trying to catch Polanski for years. He has called off trips before because he'd become aware of the US having put in an extradition request. I don't see it as an individual trying to make a name for themselves - more a legal system that doesn't want a high profile fugitive seemingly getting away with it.
forget it jake it's chinatown
what a fantastic film!
i really enjoyed 'the pianist' better than that dirge 'schindlers list'
From "The Smoking Gun" - Transcript of the 1977 Grand Jury
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0720051polanski1.html
Was about to
post that myself after Andrew Collins tweeted about it.
judge n prosecution collusion or not - he's a grubby little manipulative fucker who took advantage of a 13 year old girl. What his films are like and whether Hollywood has forgiven him or not is irellevant.
I doubt it will come to anything, it will be tied up in years of legal wrangling. If they wanted to nail him so badly they would have done it back then.
The state of California...
...is about to release up to 40,000 prisoners because of jail overcrowding and the bankruptcy of the state and yet it can still summon up the money and energy to pursue this bloke. What do you think is driving this? The burning desire to see justice served or the burning desire to get good headlines on the Fox Channel?
Prisoners
that will have, at least, been sentenced and will have served a custodial term in punishment of their crime. I imagine they are merely prioritising the need to seek someone who has escaped from any form of punishment for a crime that no one appears to be of the opinion didn't happen.
The early release of prisoners may well be wrong. As well. But I don't think that was your point.
My Kids Were At School With His Kids
Only for a year in Paris, but still. Have to say I was more impressed at seeing him rock up at our then eight-year-old's party than I was worried he might start fiddling around or something. It's all obviously a big bowl of wrong, but surely to God it's a long time ago, the girl involved has begged for it to go away, and what possible good can come out of this whole affair?
what he did was reprehensible
but given that the victim involved wants nothing to do with this anymore (and who can blame her? she's 40 something and doesn't want her life defined by one event that happened 30 years ago) it seems like a huge waste of extremely limited resources.
In an ideal world he should be punished appropriately, of course he should. But it's not an ideal world. Personally, I'd far rather see the obscene amount of money this will cost being used to help children in the here and now.
The victim doesn't get a vote in this
What happens in the legal process is out of the victim's hands - and the corollary of leaving it up to the victim would probably be some form of castration for many people found guilty of this kind of crime, if the decision was taken nearer the time of the crime.
The good that can come of this is demonstrating that even those rich enough to run away from justice, having been found guilty, still have to face the consequences of their actions.
he's not
as famous as Michael Jackson, so he may not continually get away with it on technicalities
Punish the crime, forgive the criminal
Some crimes demand punishment. As a society, should we say that ('even' statutory) rape should go unpunished if you can evade justice for 30 years? My view is that such a serious crime has to be seen to be punished, however long ago it happened.
Dominic Lawson
who is not a writer I often agree with, puts the case into perspective in today's Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic...
Disastrous, irresponsible journalism
1. It's false to suggest that Polanski "pleaded guilty" to "drugging and sodomising" anyone. He pleaded guilty to having sex with a girl who was too young. The prosecution dropped all the other, more serious charges, so he was never tried for them, much less found guilty of them. To toss out such an assertion anonymously in the comments section of a music blog is one thing; publishing it in a national newspaper is quite another - as Max Mosley knows very well.
2. It's false to suggest that Polanski "plied her with the drug Quaalude mixed with glasses of champagne". He didn't, as Lawson implies, spike the girl's drink; he offered her about a third of a tablet, which she accepted ("I took it with a swallow of champagne"). And she knew full well what she was taking, because it wasn't the first time she'd taken it (or, come to that, had sex), as the transcript of her grand-jury testimony from which Lawson quotes so selectively - but rather oddly fails to link to - makes clear.
I hope Polanski - indefensible slimeball though he may well be* - sues for several orders of magnitude more than Mosley did.
The Independent went down the toilet a good few years ago, but now it's coursing its way down the sewer. Allegedly.
And people bitch about Murdoch or the Mail. Jesus.
____
* Or at least certainly appears to have been three decades ago. I'm not condoning what he did; I'm just setting the record straight, believing that the facts - the actual on-the-official-record facts - do matter a bit. Like Gus Haynes, I'm old-fashioned that way.
Archie's right...
Polanski's being seriously misrepresented here. To clarify.
In March 1977, Polanski was charged with "giving a drug to a minor, committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, oral copulation and sodomy. All the charges are felonies."
In August that year, "the movie director was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at the request of the girl's mother, who wanted to protect her daughter from the publicity expected to accompany such a trial.
The prosecution agreed to dismiss five other charges, including two more serious counts—furnishing drugs to a minor and rape by use of drugs."
Hence, Polanski, as Archie correctly says, "pleaded guilty to having sex with a girl who was too young".
Not the drugs and sodomy on a protesting child, okay? Not what he was charged with or what she testified to in front of the grand jury. No, what actually happened was that Polanski just sort of accidentally had a little bit of sex with a girl who was a little bit too young. Who wasn't even a virgin. And who had taken a quaalude before.
Hope this clears things up.
Fair play for scumbags
Your irony doesn't really make the point I assume it's intended to. What actually happened isn't at issue. What is at issue is that people are assuming that merely because he was once charged with something, ergo he has been found guilty ("convicted" was how you put it, I think) of that something.
I mentioned the non-virginal 'luud-dropping stuff because it's exactly the sort of thing that his defence team - had those charges gone to trial - would have torn the prosecution apart with, making a conviction highly unlikely anyway. (Added to which, we shouldn't forget that this is L.A. we're talking about here - the city responsible for O.J. and Jacko languishing for so many years in lockdown at a maximum-security facility.)
For what it's worth (which is as exactly as much as your or Mark Lawson's views, neither more nor less), yes, I do think it's highly likely that he deceived, cajoled and harassed her into sex that she neither properly consented to nor enjoyed, quite possibly to the extent that it constituted rape. But we should remember that grand juries don't determine guilt; they simply decide whether the prosecution's case is sufficient for the accused to be sent for trial. In this case they decided there was indeed a case to be answered, but it would have been for a jury that was never empanelled to hear that case and, as the case may be, convict him - not you or me.
If our criminal-justice system means anything at all, even supposed predatory scumbags must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And Polanski was not only not proven guilty, he wasn't even tried for the rape-related charges that most people seem to believe erroneously that he was convicted of and pleaded guilty to.
Archie, your fidelity ...
to the letter of the law is admirable.
So how come it doesn't extend to seeing Polanski sentenced for the crime for which he had been convicted? That of raping a 13-year-old girl (i.e. "engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor").
If our criminal-justice system means anything at all then surely justice should be seen to be done in this case?
Agreed
(Huh? Did I actually say that?)
But there you go again with the convicting and the raping. In California, sex with anyone under 18 is classified as "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor", even if she's 17 and he's only eighteen months older. All that counted for him to be found guilty of that was agreement that sexual intercourse took place (of whatever sort, consensual or otherwise - it's not relevant to that charge) and the date on the girl's birth certificate.
Wahey!
However, a minor can't give consent, therefore sex with a minor is considered rape because consent isn't present.
That's how it works in law.
How it works in the 'my world' of this case, however, is that it's rape because in the victim's testimony she says so. Same with the sodomy. And like the Grand Jury I believe the victim. Which is why I have little time for this 'only convicted of "unlawful sex with a minor"' line as peddled by Polanski apologists.
Uh-oh
Our paths diverge again. You can't say "that's how it works in law" and then immediately go on to ignore how it works in law when it comes to saying what people have and have not been convicted of. Well, you can, but you really, really shouldn't.
"Statutory rape" and "rape" may share a word but they're entirely different legal figures. Much as not all those accused of homicide are necessarily accused of being murderers (hi, Dr Conrad! Allegedly!), not all those accused of statutory rape are necessarily accused of being rapists.
(Again, Polanski may indeed have full-meaning-raped the girl, but he wasn't convicted of doing so.)
Yes
I thought about saying 'statutory' rapist, but then I remembered the testimony, and the fact that "the movie director was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at the request of the girl's mother, who wanted to protect her daughter from the publicity expected to accompany such a trial."
And I decided not to bother typing 'statutory'.
Archie
Lawson ain't that daft. Read again - he makes no mention of what Polanski pleaded guilty to. The drugging and sodomy is not mentioned in the context of charges. And it could be argued that the phrasing is careful as regards the drugs and champagne; hang on - no it's not. You quote "plied her with the drug Quaalude mixed with glasses of champagne" which could imply drugs then champagne. The Lawson article states "plied her with the drug Quaalude mixed IN (my capitals) glasses of champagne".
Sticky ground, Mr Lawson.. best not to libel people in London..
This has been bothering me enormously...
...but putting it bluntly, my head says "prosecute the rapist scumbag," and my heart says "leave it alone, the victim said she doesn't want it brought up again."
I have no idea which of these two positions is actually correct.
And no one here has lifted me off of my fence.
Sorry to be so rubbish.
There is a parallel
ironically - given Polanski's past - with the pusuit of Nazi war criminals.
They are now frail old men. Many of their victims are either dead - or have - in an act of reconciliation and forgiveness - "moved on".
However, the enormity of their crime remains. It is entirely right, in my view, that they continue to be pursued until the grave or the pyre claim them.
Similarly, in Polanski's case - I believe he should be made to stand trial - so the complexities and details of the actual case can be clarified.
That his talent is undoubted, that his own life has been shadowed by acts of enormity, that the victim has requested no further action be taken, that the timing of the extradition request may have it's own motivation - all of these are true.
Yet, what is also true is that justice must not only be done - but be seen to be done - and that due course of law - particularly in a serious case like this - must act out it's own conclusion.
For Polanski's - as much as anyone else's - sake.
Agreed - but stand trial for what, though?
Surely it can only be for absconding while awaiting sentence, so any talk of righting any alleged crimes of drugging or anally raping anyone is irrelevant - the D.A. dropped those charges, remember, in return for his guilty plea on the lesser charge.
To all intents and purposes he has already been tried and found partially guilty of whatever went on at Jack Nicholson's house that evening.
Or am I missing something?
He absconded
before he could be sentenced for the crime which he did plead guilty to - unlawful sex with a minor
Yes
So why is everyone talking about him paying the price for rape and sodomy and spiked drinks, then?
Because they seem to be back on the table.
Some of the newspaper articles today suggest that the original plea bargain was broken when he absconded. That plea bargain was based on only charging him with the one count. The other charges may now be pressed, in addition to whatever comes from his fugitive time.
At last, some actual information!
Thanks, El. Much obliged.
Californian law. You can't make it up. (Although quite a few seem willing to try.)
Well then,
Can I put the kettle on now ? What are we all having...
Plea Bargain? - Travesty More Like
I know this blog is long but so much of the Polanski case is wrong. It particularly starts with the acceptance of that plea bargain way back when. I think any half sensative person after they had read the young girls statement would come to the conclusion a seriouse crime had been committed. Never mind Polanski doing a runner, what message would that bargain send to any other man forcing them selves on a minor? It was plain wrong and the prosecution needs to take a long look in a mirror. These may have taken place and this is why the extradition is being most firmly pursued.
Lets be honest, over the years Polanski has stuck two fingers up at US justice. The line at long last is being pulled in.
I've done some checking up
There's a statute of limitations in California that applies to all sex crimes less serious than "aggravated rape", which Polanski wasn't indicted for (physical violence or threats with a weapon are required for that). If, after he skipped, the prosecutors had decided they were entitled to bin the plea-bargaining deal and revive the drug- and rape-related charges, they should have done so before 1987, but it seems they didn't. It's too late for that now.
All he'll have to face is the original sentence he would have had for the underage-sex charge and any new charges related to his upping and leaving the country. Travesty or not, the alleged drugging and raping stuff is now legal water under the bridge.
NOTE: I've had a few more thoughts on the wider implications of this issue, but to avoid taking my blog-hogging to even more extreme levels, I thought it best to stick them elsewhere.
tuppence worth
one of the easiest ways for people to get their heads round this is simply to identify with Polanski ... (since a lot of Word folk are around the age Polanski was when this all kicked off) ... so given the age you are now (40something perhaps), how far off-beam would you have to be - tonight for example - to try it on with a 13-year-old? and if you did, exactly how bad a man would that make you?
that thought pretty much has me reaching for the mind bleach
the other observation however ... autumn 2009, some foreign hippy type turns up at the Giant's Causeway in Co Antrim several mornings in a row, spray paints naked children then gets them to clamber over the rocks and he photographs them ... the police are called and he's in the shit; do it in autumn 1973 however and you've got the gatefold cover for Houses of the Holy
also, 2009 ... you approach a pubescent girl on the tube and ask if you can take pics of her naked "for an album cover" ... "oh and can you just hold this vaguely phallic metal thing while you're at it" ... you're busted ... 40 years earlier, you get the cover shot for Blind Faith ...
and *no* i'm not excusing RP at all, just making a vague point that sexual mores in the late '60s and into the '70s were different to now ... and judging a drugged up Hollywood party of more than 30 years ago by the moral standards of 2009 could be misleading UNLESS RP's behaviour is deemed to be so heinous that it's as eternally bad as, well, like the other poster mentioned above, genocide?
finally, a quote:
"See, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything!"
Noah Cross, Chinatown
true or false?
False
One thing your time travelling approach forgot to mention was that RP was found guilty of a crime back in the 70's when the morales were a little, shall we say, less developed. So it was a crime then as it is now. The difference would have been that had it have happened more recently, a more robust approach would have been taken which would have probably started with there being no chance of a plea bargain.
Different crimes for different times
Morals were less developed in the Seventies? Until 1976 consensual gay sex, even in private, was a felony in California. Those convicted of it were placed on a register of sex offenders and their whereabouts were monitored - in other words, they were dealt with in exactly the same way as paedophiles are today.
Every era tends to crow about being the one that has finally nailed the definitive rules for fair, moral, decent behaviour. Then another era comes along and accuses the earlier one of getting it all hopelessly, outrageously wrong.
Definitive rules?
I can't say I, or most other people I can think of, think we have "nailed the definitive rules for fair, moral, decent behaviour" in our modern society.
Otherwise why we would keep on trying to change them.
That was my (clumsy) point
That if you were going to do what RP did (I'll go with the grand jury testimony version for this point) you were, from a punishment point of view:
a) better off to have plea bargained it the 70's
b) better off to have been sentenced for it in the 70's
The illegality of the act hasn't changed (unlike homosexuality) but the degree of opprobrium has certainly got higher. The opposite is true of homosexuality. Which is called progress.
My personal view is that RP should have served his sentence at the time. Then his punishment would have been complete and we could have all moved on without having difficult moral mazes changing over time.
whilst on another plane of existence
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20091001/tuk-tate-modern-removes-naked-brook...
The supposed piece of "art" of a naked 10 year old girl, greased and with make-up on has, rather sensibly been abandoned as an idea by the Tate Modern, under police advice.
Rather worryingly in the article it says the "art" piece was displayed in New York at the Guggenheim, without attracting controversy.
What does that say about the way our species is headed?
Does anyone remember the photographer David Hamilton?
When I was at school, he was famous for producing books filled with arty, soft-focus, grainy photos of beautiful pubescent girls.. er.. discovering thir sexuality. Which, for a bunch of rampant pubescent boys was manna from heaven when someone managed to nick one from a local bookshop.
I thought of this recently and was horrified. This was kiddy porn, pure and simple. So I did a google search on David Hamilton and was quite gratified to find that his work was now classified as such, with posession being considered an offence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2005/jun/23/photography.art
Wikipedia, though, says it's all cobblers and The Grauniad made it up.
Criminey!..
One Act.One Night.Nobody hurt? Sex, wasn't it?
Nobody hurt?
Not according to the latest statements of the victim.
44 year old man with a 13 year old girl ?
you are joking, aren't you ?
The reason he was arrested now?
An article in the Daily Beast says that it was in response to a recent attempt by Polanski's lawyers to get the case dismissed. This in turn was based on some of the statements in the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. And some of that has now turned out to be inaccurate.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-30/polanskis-lost...
A lot of the discussion on this topic in the media has been based around issues of morality. And I think that is interesting and useful. But the other part of a story must surely be the "facts" and I have found the coverage that I have seen in the papers has been short on this. This is certainly the first suggestion I have seen that the arrest warrant didn't come out of the blue.
I don't know if the article is completely right, but it does show that there is more to the legal aspects of the story than have emerged so far.