The temporary arrest of Polanski has certainly accomplished one thing: to bring this entire sorry affair back to the memory of everyone. Polanski may be free, but he also in everybody's fresh memory now once again as a child molester.

If I were in Polanski's shoes, the hardest thing for me would be to face my own children and try to explain to them what this is all about.

Originally Posted by Zichao

Whatever happened to the statute of limitations? Even the girl says she just wished everyone'd just shut up and fuck off.

None when you skip bail and run from the law, they chased that kid all the way to the bahamas for doing it.

__________________
Give unto Caesar that what is Caesar's, and lie like hell to keep as much of the rest of your shit as you can.

"If you want something said ask a man...if you want something done, ask a woman" Margaret Thatcher

From SwissInfo

Polanski defence call for probe into case

swissinfo.ch and agencies
Jul 14, 2010 - 08:19


The legal team for filmmaker Roman Polanksi have called for a thorough investigation into alleged judicial misconduct in his 1977 sex crime case in the United States.

Switzerland turned down a US request to extradite him on Monday, saying the US failed to clarify whether a plea deal made in the original court case showed he had served out his sentence.

"That evidence was not insignificant and the failure to produce it [to Switzerland] was neither accidental nor a 'technicality' as some have said," Polanski's Los Angeles defense team stated on Tuesday.

They said an investigation into the misconduct allegations should be carried out by a "fair and impartial third party" and the results should be made public.

Samantha Geimer, the victim in the Polanksi case, said on Tuesday that she hoped the matter would now be closed. She has repeatedly asked for the case to be dropped.

Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with Geimer – then aged 13 - in 1977 but he fled the US before sentencing, saying he believed the judge would renege on a plea agreement under which the 42 days he had spent in detention for psychiatric assessment would constitute his full sentence.

The argument over the reported plea deal and the allegations of judicial misconduct in the original case have been the focus of years of legal wrangling in California courts.

Polanksi was freed from Swiss house arrest on Monday. He had been detained at his Gstaad chalet since December after being picked up entering Switzerland to attend a film festival.

Originally Posted by LiberalNation

None when you skip bail and run from the law, they chased that kid all the way to the bahamas for doing it.

Over here it's just if no one knows where you are. If they know and do nothing it keeps going.

Quote:

Do these defenders of Polanski understand what they are saying? Harris has four children. If a great film director drugs and rapes them tomorrow, will he call the police, or will he say it would be "disgusting" to do so? Would he say the police and prosecutors trying to protect his children were a "lynch mob"? If the rapist ran off, would he say that after three decades on the run (boasting about his crime) he should walk free? Now the campaign has succeeded. So congratulations to Whoopi and Bernard and Robert: an unrepentant, bragging child-rapist won't face his day in court, thanks in part to you. Have fun at the victory party. But you may want to leave your daughters at home.

Part of the reason I love Japanese fiction is that it's perfectly possible to leave all sour morality out of the world that's created. So often it's perfectly okay to rape people within the story because a) Japan has never really had a culture of consent anyway b) it's true love or destiny or whatever c) the fans demand it and don't want to be bothered with tedious moral blather d) traditionally in Japanese Buddhist thinking anything that is said out loud (for example, "No! Please no!") necessarily has less value that what's unsaid ("Yes please!").

I've said this before, but real life is crap.

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From SwissInfo
Possible mix-up over Polanski transcripts

Simon Bradley
swissinfo.ch and agencies
Jul 16, 2010 - 13:31


Film director Roman Polanski may have been released by Switzerland after confusion over paperwork in the United States.

On Thursday US prosecutors disputed who was responsible for an apparent miscommunication about sealed transcripts requested by the Swiss authorities.

The US Justice Department insists that it notified Los Angeles prosecutors about its decision to reject the Swiss request for access to confidential testimony about Polanski’s expected sentence for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

In a statement on Thursday, the department said the Los Angeles district attorney's office provided input and “approved all responses from the US government to Swiss authorities on this matter”, including one involving testimony that proved crucial in Switzerland's decision to free the director rather than extradite him to the US.

But a district attorney's spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons, told Associated Press their office was “not specifically notified of the [Swiss] request” and did not know that the Justice Department had turned it down.

Guido Balmer, spokesman for the Swiss justice ministry, told swissinfo.ch: “There could have been a misunderstanding in the US over this issue.”

On Monday Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the decision had been taken not to extradite the 76-year-old Oscar-winning director following Washington’s refusal to give access to these confidential documents.

“In these circumstances it was not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty that Roman Polanski had already served the sentence to which he was condemned at the time," Widmer-Schlumpf told a news conference in the capital, Bern.


Swiss request

Switzerland officially asked the US Justice Department on May 5 for access to sealed private testimony by former Los Angeles prosecutor Roger Gunson, who was in charge of the unlawful sex case in the 1970s. Polanski admitted the offence and spent 42 days in jail on psychiatric assessment but fled the US before being sentenced.

The Swiss said they wanted to know whether Polanski had already served his sentence. Swiss extradition laws would allow him to be sent back to the US only if he was going to be required to serve at least six months in prison.

The Swiss believed Gunson’s testimony may have clarified that issue.

Meanwhile, the filmmaker’s American legal team had separately sought the release of the transcripts. On May 10 Judge Peter Espinoza of the Los Angeles County Superior Court rejected this request, citing, in part, a written assurance by the county prosecutor handling the case that the Swiss never sought the information.


“No conflict”

According to the Swiss, the US Justice Department gave them a written reply denying access to the testimony on May 13.

“In between our official request and their reply, I don’t know what happened,” said Balmer, adding that the US Justice Department had been their only point of contact over this matter.

On Thursday Gibbons said there was “no conflict between statements made by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the US Justice Department”.

But Loyola University law professor Stan Goldman felt the affair had been “an embarrassment” for the district attorney's office.

“It was they who were seeking to get Polanski back, and they have failed,” he told AP.

Polanski was arrested in September 2009 in Zurich on his way to a film festival, before being placed under house arrest in his Gstaad chalet. He is now said to have left the country for an unknown destination.


Chalet police

The Swiss justice ministry wants to prevent similar controversial legal cases.

Widmer-Schlumpf has asked officials to look into the possibility of tightening the so-called Lex Koller law, which governs property sales to non-resident foreigners, to make police background checks on foreign owners obligatory.

When Polanski bought the “Milky Way” chalet in Gstaad in 2006, he was the subject of an Interpol "red notice" for the 1977 sex case.

“In future, any property sales to foreigners should be checked to see if there is an international arrest warrant pending,” Balmer told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Wednesday.

The fact that Polanski had been coming to the country for years and owned a chalet in good faith were among the arguments used to reject his extradition.

Handing him over to US justice officials would have been contrary to the concept of protection of confidence, according to public international law.