07-12-2010, 11:55 AM
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#142 (permalink)
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Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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Quote:
The prurient hounding of Roman Polanski is over at last
The Swiss decision not to extradite the director is just – it was a vengeful demand and his victim wanted the case closed
Roman Polanski is a free man, at long last. Justice and reason have finally prevailed after nine months of mass hysteria on both sides of the Atlantic, hysteria and moralistic prejudices. The Swiss justice ministry has finally announced that the French-Polish film director will not be extradited to the United States to be judged for what would, in truth, be a second time. The Swiss minister alluded to the fact that Roman Polanski had already spent time in prison after a plea-bargain was agreed between all parties and the judge. The American demand for extraditing Polanski had therefore no grounds. As the Swiss authorities diplomatically put it: "The reason for the decision lies in the fact that it was not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty a fault in the US extraditionary request." The US justice department now has to close the case once and for all, and get on with more pressing issues.
The question today is really this: how did we get to this Kafka-esque situation whereby a man who had already served time in prison for a crime he admitted committing suddenly finds himself arrested again by overzealous authorities in a foreign land, sent to prison, then confined to house arrest for nine months, 33 years after the facts? "But he fled justice!" Polanski's detractors would reply. As admirably shown in the rigorous documentary made in 2008 by American director Marina Zenovich – Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired – in 1978, Roman Polanski simply had the guts to flee the iniquitous justice of the Los Angeles court and celebrity-obsessed Judge Rittenband, whose gross misconduct is today officially acknowledged by all.
Polanski never claimed not to have had unlawful sexual intercourse with the 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. He indeed pleaded guilty. He also came back from Europe to be assessed by psychiatrists and serve a 90-day sentence in prison agreed by all parties. He only fled when he discovered that the judge wanted to go back on his word.
Roman Polanski's arrest in Zurich last September was shocking, but it wasn't shocking because Polanski is a great artist, a Holocaust survivor or because he has known the most dreadful tragedies in his life, it wasn't shocking because his victim had been asking for the case to be closed since 1997 and received a large settlement; no one, however great, is above the law. His arrest was shocking because of the arbitrary and vengeful nature of the American demand. As law professor Ronald Sokol wrote on the case in the New York Times:
"There is social value in discouraging criminals from fleeing the jurisdiction. There is value in seeing that justice is done and in showing that no one is above the law. But those values can erode over time if the circumstances which gave rise to the need for justice have vanished. To some, belated enforcement will appear arbitrary, a ritual of form over substance. When the state threatens imprisonment, it must be seen to act in an even-handed manner. If not, it mocks the very rule of law."
Finally, what was also most disturbing in the whole affair was the prurient voyeurism of Polanski's detractors, indulging in the very details of his alleged crimes. Reactions to the case disturbingly revealed rampant moral McCarthyism. Anyone defending the film-maker was immediately accused of making an apology for rape. The end of the affair should hopefully bring back sense to those who had lost it for nine months.
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The prurient hounding of Roman Polanski is over at last | Agnes Poirier | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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