Roman Polanski Case

Does "everysthing else" include getting your pregnant wife slashed by a bunch of maniacs of the kind that only seem to live in America?

I was referring only to the treatment he received following the murder. Not that it has anything to do with the topic of the thread.
 
It's still cynical.
 
I see his legal team getting a retrial on the basis of the ex-parte communications. I really don't think they will dismiss the charges. I then see the prosecution trying to subpoena the victim, which she will most likely fight. Because charging a rape victim with contempt of court doesn't look that good, the prosecution will most likely not have a case (as they will not be able to use anything Polanski or anybody else said from the previous trial as evidence). Therefore, I think he's going to get either a very lenient plea bargain or let off entirely due to lack of evidence.

Do I agree with this? I honestly don't know- I don't know all the facts, and my years of studying the legal system of Australia has taught me to keep in mind that every case has a lot more facts than the media can and will report. Often we as the public being served our only information from an instiutionally biased and selective media will cry in outrage over many of the sentences we see being handed down to people we would like to see shot, when there is a very logical and reasonable explanation for their punishment. And if there isn't, it is normally fixed in appeal. I don't think we can jump on our high horses here and ask for what we want out of this when we don't know every fact. We make mistakes that way :)

All i know is that the judicial system here hasn't been that effective. Either they should have taken care of this 30 years ago efficiently (I'm sure the US could have worked out an extradition path with a few countries that have reciprocating extradition treaties) or it should be let go.
 
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Well, that's part of being a celebrity. Media scrutiny, paparazzi, and everything else.

So celebrities really should be treated differently?

But I don't think someone who chooses to be a director of art-house films necessarily chooses fame and all that may come with it. And I don't see how you could justify personal attacks on a victim of crime just because they have some fame.

If I could turn your statement around, the price of those wanting to achieve fame is time spent on the casting couch, everyone knows that. :twisted:

...the kind that only seem to live in America?

:|
Violent crime can happen anywhere. Not to mention that this crime in particular shocked America and had people in that relatively safe area locking their doors for the first time.

I see his legal team getting a retrial on the basis of the ex-parte communications.

I'm no expert, but... there was no trial. He plead guilty to one charge and was simply awaiting sentencing.
 
is Polanski a paedophile? Probably not. However, it doesn't help that after going on the run, he struck up a relationship with Natassja Kinski. He was late 40s, she was 15. *shrugs*

As for the argument that it was 30 years ago, as someone pointed out, there is still the clamour for justice for guards at the Holocaust. Perhaps less hyperbolically, Ronnie Biggs was brought back to the UK after 30 years in Rio. You can't just "give up" just because the guy is out of reach for a while.

The guy has made movies in the 30 years, on a very regular basis and featuring some big names. He's been pretty high profile and that is pretty understandable going to stick in the US's craw.
 
Perhaps, but rape and paedophilia are two separate things. He never plead guilty to or was convicted of rape (by force) but he did have sex with a minor. That does not automatically define you as a paedophile.

Not sure what you mean in the second part, he did "get away" from the rape charge - by refusing to plead guilty to rape the charge was dropped (the prosecution didn't want to force the victim to take the stand).





He did spend time in prison, yes just 42 days, which was supposed to be 90 but for some reason they released him early. Let's not get into a discussion about whether that was sufficient, the point was he did the time that was asked of him and was expecting probation as agreed on in the plea bargain.

The Judge then decided to disregard the plea bargain, threatened to send him away for life - he had the power to send him away for 50 years - and deport him involuntarily. And you're worried about chaos in the legal system? This is the same Judge who took sentencing advice from a reporter, took bookings for courtroom seats from friends and told lawyers on both sides what to say during the trial.

And everyone's comeback to that is, well he could always appeal. :D

The Judge did not decided anything. He based his action on rumors and what he heard. He ran away before sentencing.
As for an appeal, what is the problem with that? He committed the crime in the United States, and, therefore should work within our legal laws. If i commit a crime in Japan should I just run away back to the US if i feel I dont want to play by their rules. If his home nation, France and Poland, had a problem with the US handling of the trial they could have stepped up as well. But at the time before he could allow ANY legal actions to be taken, he ran away and hid, knowing damn well if he got to France they would not send him back.

As for his time in "jail" he was not in jail. He was in a psychiatric evaluation program to help give the judge a better idea how to sentience him. Maybe after 42 days they got the report done and had it ready for the judge. He was also free to travel before going in to the evaluation. Remember he ran before the judge could make a decision, be it a right OR wrong one.

My major problem with the argument is people seem to feel just because of his fear of what MIGHT have happen, or would the judge MIGHT have done, he had all the right to run away and not fight WITHIN the law of CA and the US. I dont see how this argument works for anyone else, if you want to live in this country you have to play with our rules and legal system. Dont want to? Dont come here. When I travel abroad I am doing the same.
 
Sorry - bang the sod up in gaol.

'Hollywood gliterarti' - I do not care what the mitigations were, MJ should have gone, an other should now be on death row as far as I am concerned.

The only question I have is why now? They left him alone for all that time - something is rotten in the state of Denmark me thinks.
 
The Judge did not decided anything. He based his action on rumors and what he heard. He ran away before sentencing.
As for an appeal, what is the problem with that? He committed the crime in the United States, and, therefore should work within our legal laws. If i commit a crime in Japan should I just run away back to the US if i feel I dont want to play by their rules. If his home nation, France and Poland, had a problem with the US handling of the trial they could have stepped up as well. But at the time before he could allow ANY legal actions to be taken, he ran away and hid, knowing damn well if he got to France they would not send him back.

As for his time in "jail" he was not in jail. He was in a psychiatric evaluation program to help give the judge a better idea how to sentience him. Maybe after 42 days they got the report done and had it ready for the judge. He was also free to travel before going in to the evaluation. Remember he ran before the judge could make a decision, be it a right OR wrong one.

My major problem with the argument is people seem to feel just because of his fear of what MIGHT have happen, or would the judge MIGHT have done, he had all the right to run away and not fight WITHIN the law of CA and the US. I dont see how this argument works for anyone else, if you want to live in this country you have to play with our rules and legal system. Dont want to? Dont come here. When I travel abroad I am doing the same.

Like I said, misinformation.

I suggest you watch the documentary I mentioned earlier.

Roman Polanski, now in custody in Switzerland, spent 42 days imprisoned in Chino in the 1970s.

Polanski, 44, reported to the California Institution for Men on Dec. 16, 1977, for a psychiatric evaluation following his guilty plea to one count of unlawful sex with a minor.

In what must have been an unsettling circumstance, several members of the Manson gang, who had killed Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, eight years earlier, were housed in Chino.
 
Like I said, misinformation.

I suggest you watch the documentary I mentioned earlier.

After the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland in 2009, David Wells, a retired deputy district attorney, recanted the interview he gave the director about advising the judge in the case in ex parte communication. According to Marcia Clarke of the Daily Beast:

?I lied,? Wells told me yesterday, referring to his comments in the movie that he told the judge how he could renege on a plea-bargain agreement and send Polanski back to jail after he had been released from a 42-day psychiatric evalation?the heart of Polanski?s claims of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. ?I know I shouldn?t have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I?d told the judge what to do.?[4]
 

Don't believe I've mentioned that guy in all the posts I've made.
If you can find a reference to him, by all means, post it.

Also, it may well be a fair claim that that prosecutor is now claiming he lied in order to save the case. He either to lied to the documentary makers to spice up the story (he had nothing to gain from lying then) or he is lying now to save the case and stop it being thrown out. Either way he's a liar. Not hard to make a mockery of a justice system that does it all on its own.
 
Don't believe I've mentioned that guy in all the posts I've made.
If you can find a reference to him, by all means, post it.

Also, it may well be a fair claim that that prosecutor is now claiming he lied in order to save the case. He either to lied to the documentary makers to spice up the story (he had nothing to gain from lying then) or he is lying now to save the case and stop it being thrown out. Either way he's a liar. Not hard to make a mockery of a justice system that does it all on its own.

I suggest you watch the documentary I mentioned earlier.

The reason he fled is quite complicated but it basically comes down to the fact that the presiding Judge was a bit of a loony and committed all sorts of misconduct during the trial. He also told his buddies that he was going to send Polanski away for life before he was due to be sentenced - the maximum sentence for his charge was 50 years in prison. Also, he was to be deported after serving his sentence.

Is the documentary not the source coloring your presumptions of the judge?

Further light reading if you like....Roman Polanski plea transcript.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0928091polanskiplea1.html
On page ten he actually admits to knowing she was only 13 prior to raping her.
 
Like I said, misinformation.

I suggest you watch the documentary I mentioned earlier.

No thanks, from all reports pretty much just a propaganda by friends of his.

What misinformation he received? about the judge? who told him, his lawyer? His lawyer would have then been held at fault for giving bad information at the same time would have known he can still fight it. Still just because I am told I might get life does not mean i start to run. And if I do, i should be ready for what comes next.

As for the fact Chino may have housed the people that killed his wife, well, he could have requested a transfer to a different facility. Also I dont see this information cites by anyone else other then you.
But prison is not suppose to be a pleasant place, so again it still does not justify him running.

Best not get in a situation that could land you in jail, say, getting a 13 year old drunk, high and then thinking this would be a good time to sodomize her.
 
Is the documentary not the source coloring your presumptions of the judge?

Well, not so much the documentary, but the comments by the prosecuting attorney were pretty damning among other first-hand accounts. Edit: I notice now that your quote says that dishonest prosecutor is at the heart of Polanski's misconduct claim. Legally he may be but there were other acts of misconduct that stuck out in my mind more.

On page ten he actually admits to knowing she was only 13 prior to raping her.

Thanks for the link, I read up to page 10 and just so the lazy can see for themselves I'll post that section here. It's there in black and white, but there are some awfully large spaces between the lines, if you catch my drift.

Screenshot2009-10-03at82007PM.png


What misinformation he received? about the judge?

As for the fact Chino may have housed the people that killed his wife, well, he could have requested a transfer to a different facility. Also I dont see this information cites by anyone else other then you.

But prison is not suppose to be a pleasant place, so again it still does not justify him running.

No misinformation spread by yourself.

You said he didn't go to prison, now you admit he did go but revert to the, well it isn't supposed to be a holiday spiel. Well did he go, or didn't he?

And now you say he could have requested a transfer. You have evidence to support that?

You don't see what information cited by news sources? It's hardly a secret he went to Chino, you can look it up yourself.

This is what I quoted earlier.


Oh, and Brydiem, seems you're right that he could withdraw his guilty plea in which case he could be charged with all original 6 charges, creating a new trial (not a retrial) but it wouldn't require the victim to take the stand, they could rely on his previous testimony.

Another defense strategy could be seeking to withdraw Polanski's 1977 guilty plea. Voiding the plea deal would open the door to a trial on all six felonies originally charged, including more serious counts such as rape and sodomy, and the possibility of a much longer prison sentence.

But, longtime defense attorney Roger Jon Diamond said, "it could be good for him because the victim is not going to cooperate with the prosecutor."
 
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Sorry - bang the sod up in gaol.

'Hollywood gliterarti' - I do not care what the mitigations were, MJ should have gone, an other should now be on death row as far as I am concerned.

The only question I have is why now? They left him alone for all that time - something is rotten in the state of Denmark me thinks.

Exactly.

As I already said: Polanski has a house in Switzerland, where he regularly stayed. Why arrest him now and nor earlier? It wasn't like he was hiding from the world. He was and is a public figure, he recently made a movie here in Germany. Did someone ask the German government to deliver him to the United States? No.

And no one else did during all those 30 years.

Then he was invited to a Swiss film festival, where he would have received a lifetime achievement award - and they arrested him. WTF? They couldn't have picked a more humiliating moment. Someone is out for revenge there, not for justice. And that's what disturbs me.

That and all the artificial outrage and the hypocrisy: "What? Roman who...? He is still out there? Damn, we completely forgot about him. Ahem... alright, let's punish him now then!"
 
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As I already said: Polanski has a house in Switzerland, where he regularly stayed. Why arrest him now and nor earlier? It wasn't like he was hiding from the world. He was and is a public figure, he recently made a movie here in Germany. Did someone ask the German government to deliver him to the United States? No.

And no one else did during all those 30 years.

From the LA Times.
(edited)

Roman Polanski's attorneys helped provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles County prosecutors had made no real effort to capture the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive, two law enforcement sources familiar with the case told The Times.

The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office was not serious about extraditing Polanski to face sentencing in a child sex case he fled in 1978 was a minor point in two lengthy July court filings by the director's attorneys.

But the charge caught the attention of prosecutors, who had made several attempts to apprehend Polanski over the years.

There have been persistent questions about why authorities arrested Polanski now given that the director has routinely traveled throughout Europe, including Switzerland, without incident.

Based in Paris, he spent long stretches in Berlin and Prague filming movies, oversaw theater productions in Vienna and skied at his chalet in Gstaad.

But what appears to have set the trip apart was its wide publicity in the weeks after Polanski's lawyers had accused prosecutors of inaction.

Details of the festival, such as the timing of Polanski's red carpet stroll and acceptance speech, were readily available online and movie industry publications had said he planned to attend, including a Daily Variety story in early August.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment on what role if any the court filings by Polanski's attorneys played in the arrest. But the office produced a list of eight instances since 1978 in which prosecutors took steps to apprehend Polanski.

"Those attempts were not successful. This attempt was," spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.

Some of the moves were bureaucratic -- the opening of a case file when authorities established that Polanski had taken up residence in France after his flight from L.A. in 1978. But most involved responding to reports of planned international trips by Polanski. Three months after the director became a fugitive, prosecutors learned that he was planning a trip to England and prepared an arrest warrant. It is unclear whether Polanski made the trip, but the warrant was never served.

In 1986, prosecutors consulted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about a possible visit to Canada by Polanski, but the trip never materialized. In 1994, they told the Justice Department that they were still interested in pursuing Polanski and submitted an arrest warrant request to France. His French citizenship has long protected him from extradition and it's unclear how French officials responded.

In 2005, Polanski traveled to Thailand and prosecutors alerted Interpol, but the director was not arrested. In 2007, prosecutors tried to arrange his arrest during a trip to Israel, but authorities there requested additional information and the director left the country in the interim.

The final date on the list, Sept. 22, was the day prosecutors prepared the provisional warrant for Polanski's arrest en route to the film festival.

Seems they may have taken offence to the accusation that they had done nothing to try to catch him when, in actual fact, they had.
 
So celebrities really should be treated differently?

Celebrities are treated differently. Being treated like royalty isn't exactly a big deal, though, but being above the law is.

That and all the artificial outrage and the hypocrisy: "What? Roman who...? He is still out there? Damn, we completely forgot about him. Ahem... alright, let's punish him now then!"

So... it would be better to just say, "What? Roman who...? Ahh, that was 30 years ago. So what if he raped a 13 year old girl and fled the country after being found guilty to avoid serving a sentence. Who cares!" It would be a bigger hypocrisy to put laws into place and fail to enforce them.

There is a very good reason why Roman fled from the US and never returned. If they didn't want him in custody, don't you think he could have been here to accept his Oscar and various other awards? Personally, I think money played no small part. The man makes movies, they get imported to the US where they make a lot of money, which the government taxes every step of the way, why try and stop him?

Either way though, they're obligated to enforce the multiple warrants for his arrest, it would be hypocritical not to.
 
By the way: You know you're on the right way in a discussion, when you got neg-rep'd by some anonymous clod for repeating your arguments ;)
 
Celebrities are treated differently. Being treated like royalty isn't exactly a big deal, though, but being above the law is.

The idiom, to be treated like royalty has lost some of its meaning when you consider recent events. :p

I was just having a go because a lot of people (maybe not you and maybe not even in this thread) let their hatred of the rich and/or famous get the better of them.
 
No misinformation spread by yourself.

You said he didn't go to prison, now you admit he did go but revert to the, well it isn't supposed to be a holiday spiel. Well did he go, or didn't he?

And now you say he could have requested a transfer. You have evidence to support that?

You don't see what information cited by news sources? It's hardly a secret he went to Chino, you can look it up yourself.

This is what I quoted earlier.


He never went to prison for his convection, which is what I said from the beginning. He was there only for a eval. He was waiting to be sentenced and then took off. I always said that and that is fact. Also your article says he was happy at Chino which goes against the idea he was stressed.

And like I said, he could have asked a transfer. I dont see what is so wrong, its like as if everything should be setup just for him and then he would have stayed. Maybe next time we can give him a nice beach house so he might not run.
 
He never went to prison for his convection, which is what I said from the beginning.

Zuhaib said:
As for his time in "jail" he was not in jail.


And like I said, he could have asked a transfer.


I'm starting to wonder if you are being deliberately dishonest or just have poor reading comprehension. He went to a prison, he was imprisoned in that prison. He underwent psyche evaluation during that time. The Judge sent him there for 90 days as punishment.

Please post something supporting the fact that he could have requested a transfer (you realise the process most likely would have taken more than 90 days, don't you?). In the plea bargain the Judge specifically names 2 doctors at that institution that he was to see. Not that it's relevant, Polanski never complained about being sent to that prison, the writer mentioned it and I left in the quote because I thought it was interesting.

Assigned a 6-by-10-foot private cell, Polanski "spent most of his first afternoon inside methodically scrubbing every square inch of his new accommodations with toilet paper," according to a Polanski biography by Christopher Sandford. "After dinner, he repeated the process."

He must have been issued unlimited toilet paper.

"Over the next few days he seemed to display an almost fetishistic interest in sanitation and hygiene generally," Sandford continued,

"as a result of which he was issued a mop and broom and assigned to clean the prison day room each morning, when the other prisoners were exercising."

Polanski was allowed to watch TV occasionally, write letters and receive visitors, but he couldn't use communal areas such as the library or gym due to concerns for his safety. Likewise, he was allowed to shower in private.

An inmate told the Daily Report that Polanski was an object of derision.

"Every day they called him 'baby raper,' and they would spit at the window of his cell at him," the inmate said.


I think the prisoners had more of a moral sense than some of Polanski's defenders.

Among Polanski's visitors in Chino was producer Dino De Laurentiis, who fired him from a movie they'd planned to make. (History does not record whether De Laurentiis ate afterward at Flo's.)

The director was released on his own recognizance on Jan. 27, 1978, after serving 42 days and completing the psychiatric evaluation. He was due to be sentenced days later and apparently believed he would get probation.

Instead, he fled for Europe after hearing that the judge planned to send him back to prison indefinitely unless he agreed to be deported.

Now, nearly 32 years later, Polanski is back in custody, facing extradition to the United States. Will Chino see him again?

Although Polanski was said by inmates to grow increasingly despondent during his 42 days, he later said his time in prison had its benefits.

Sounds like prison to me.

And you know how some folk are held in custody until their trial, and then they are convicted and sentenced and the sentence takes into account "time already served"? Well that means that time spent in prison before sentencing can count toward your sentence.
 
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