The Swiss Justice Ministry has rejected a US extradition request on film director Roman Polanski, which means that he will be freed immediately.
Polanski pled guilty in a plea bargain to illegal sex after drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl back in 1977. He was 43 at the time.
The prosecutors in Los Angeles in the original case had agreed to drop rape and other charges if Polanski pled guilty to illegal sex, which carried a shorter sentence. When Polanski decided that the judge involved might not go along with the lesser sentence, he fled to Europe and has been a fugitive ever since.
The Swiss rejection was based on the fact that they claimed all of the legal documents they had requested to make a decision were not provided, and because Polanski had a reasonable expectation that he would not be arrested if he went to Switzerland after so much time had passed without any effort to extradite him.
The Swiss made point of saying that Switzerland was not making a decision about the severity of the charge or whether Polanski was guilty.
"It's not about qualifying the crime. That is not our job. It's also not about deciding over guilt or innocence," Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said.
For the record, what ramped things up for Polanski after all these years were his recent legal efforts to have the charges dropped. And part of the arguments his attorney used to do so was the fact that no effort had been made for years to try to extradite him from France, where he lives.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney David Walgren's original reply to Polanski's attempt to have the charges dropped speaks volumes.
"The defendant is a fugitive," Walgren wrote. "A fugitive child rapist, who for 32 years has made a mockery of our criminal justice system, should not be given the power or authority to request anything of this court until he, the criminal, acknowledges this court's lawful authority by surrendering on his outstanding warrant."
As it is, Polanski will walk. He just can't return to the US.
Good riddance.
5 comments:
Hey, he only drugged and anally raped a thirteen-year-old, not anything really bad. It's not like he did something awful like cuss out his girlfriend and use racial slurs. Then his career and his freedom would be over and done with.
...... i wonder if it would help if polanski stated publicly that he had accepted mohammed, converted to islam, shot the swiss minister of justice, and burned down the justice ministry. i bet the US would led him in then.
oh my, have i let my islamophobia show?
oh my.
The argument that no effort had been made to extradite him, a French citizen, from France for many years is risible, for, as a French citizen, he could not be extradited from France ; however, he could have been tried in France for rape, because rape, correctly defined as non-consensual sex ( viz, not misdefined as any illegal but consensual sex, eg, under-age sex, ) is a crime everywhere in the civilised world. It would appear that the LA gov peacock lawyers' jingoism encountered the chauvinism of France's legal bulwark & he used the loophole. The Swiss mentioned that LA had not even bothered to provide all the documents necessary for the extradition procedure ! Can't LA do anything right ? ( Oh, that's right, they can convict a cop for using the n word & then covering it up unsuccessfully in court in the OJ case. ) --dragon/dinosaur
I believe that is the purpose of drugs. For those of you with children especially those with girls you need to understand that boys give girls drugs so they wil have sex with them. And you thought they were just listening to music saying "groovy"!! Usually the girls know exactly what they are trading for the drugs and are quite eager to do it. And that is true in the Polanski case as well. Not to say Polanski is innocent but so are perhaps 20-30 million other boys and men who have traded drugs for sex. Are you ready to prosecute everyone who used drugs to get sex?
Anonymous 12:06, your moral and legal delinquency astounds me.
First of all, all civilized countries agree that administering drugs to someone and then having sex with them constitutes non-consensual sex because of diminished capacity - otherwise known as rape.And it doesn't matter how many people do it.
Should we decriminalize murder or embezzlement just because they're fairly popular criminal activity?
Second, this was a thirteen -year-old girl. That made her a minor under both US and French law below the age of consent.
As for her being 'eager'. I suggest you read the link to her testimony...she went along with it because, is her own words, she was afraid of Polanski.
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