Forever Roman

[Bob]

I guess everyone feels the same way about Ted Kennedy and that he should have been charged with, at least, vehicular manslaughter.

I certainly did. It's what would have happened to anybody else so why not him? And, in spite of those comments, I'd still rate him as a very decent and caring man who was, in my view, the greatest Senator of my lifetime.

[Wino]

In the past, Polanski has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges' refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

His victim, Samantha Geimer, who long ago identified herself, has joined in Polanski's bid for dismissal.

An HBO documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," has suggested there was behind-the-scenes manipulations by a now-retired prosecutor not assigned to the case.

Why pursue it now? I don't get it.

[Bob]

He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

While I don't know the inner workings of this particular California court, I have serious doubts about that claim. Plea bargains are made between the defendant and the prosecutor and I've never known of a judge who was involved in any negotiations for same. Typically, the plea bargain is made at a pre-trial conference which is usually attended only by defense counsel, the defendant, and somebody from the prosecutor's office. I've never seen a judge at a pre-trial conference.

In my state (Michigan), a judge normally accepts a plea bargain but I've never known one where the sentence was also part of the deal. The prosecutor can agree to recommend a given sentence and the judge, while accepting the plea bargain, clearly makes it known that, while he will be substantially influenced by the prosecutor's recommendation, the court isn't bound to that when it comes to sentencing.

Plea deals are made and accepted (or, at rarer times, rejected) by the Court. Then the defendant has to undergo some type of investigation with the probation department which issues a recommendation to the Court. Then the Judge makes the decision at a later sentencing hearing (and the Judges are often constrained by what they can do by sentencing guidelines established by the state legislature).

Polanski, prior to the sentencing date, was sent for 42 days to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and he fled before the sentencing date. The evaluation (sometimes psychiatric, sometimes not) is mandatory and, of course, gives a lot of information to the sentencing judge (like the defendant's prior history and his prior criminal record, whether the defendant is remorseful, likely to offend again, etc.).

What I'm puzzled about is how Polanski knows that the sentencing judge was going to not go with the sentencing portion (recommendation) of the plea deal he made with the prosecutor. I suspect (but I don't know) that he or his attorney didn't like what they read in the evaluation reports given to the judge (which also are shared with defense counsel and the prosecutor)and were guessing that the judge was going to give some jail time (what the judge is ultimately going to do at the sentencing hearing is not known or in writing anywhere until that sentencing hearing). If somehow (again, I don't know this) the now-deceased judge did something improper (such as telling somebody outside a court proceeding what he was going to do), the proper course of action was to have that judge removed/recused and have another judge handle the sentencing portion of the case.

[Wino]

While I don't know the inner workings of this particular California court, I have serious doubts about that claim. Plea bargains are made between the defendant and the prosecutor and I've never known of a judge who was involved in any negotiations for same. Typically, the plea bargain is made at a pre-trial conference which is usually attended only by defense counsel, the defendant, and somebody from the prosecutor's office. I've never seen a judge at a pre-trial conference.

In my state (Michigan), a judge normally accepts a plea bargain but I've never known one where the sentence was also part of the deal. The prosecutor can agree to recommend a given sentence and the judge, while accepting the plea bargain, clearly makes it known that, while he will be substantially influenced by the prosecutor's recommendation, the court isn't bound to that when it comes to sentencing.

Plea deals are made and accepted (or, at rarer times, rejected) by the Court. Then the defendant has to undergo some type of investigation with the probation department which issues a recommendation to the Court. Then the Judge makes the decision at a later sentencing hearing (and the Judges are often constrained by what they can do by sentencing guidelines established by the state legislature).

Polanski, prior to the sentencing date, was sent for 42 days to a psychiatric unit for evaluation and he fled before the sentencing date. The evaluation (sometimes psychiatric, sometimes not) is mandatory and, of course, gives a lot of information to the sentencing judge (like the defendant's prior history and his prior criminal record, whether the defendant is remorseful, likely to offend again, etc.).

What I'm puzzled about is how Polanski knows that the sentencing judge was going to not go with the sentencing portion (recommendation) of the plea deal he made with the prosecutor. I suspect (but I don't know) that he or his attorney didn't like what they read in the evaluation reports given to the judge (which also are shared with defense counsel and the prosecutor)and were guessing that the judge was going to give some jail time (what the judge is ultimately going to do at the sentencing hearing is not known or in writing anywhere until that sentencing hearing). If somehow (again, I don't know this) the now-deceased judge did something improper (such as telling somebody outside a court proceeding what he was going to do), the proper course of action was to have that judge removed/recused and have another judge handle the sentencing portion of the case.

Thanks for the insight on how the judicial system usually works. I repeated what I read in articles pertaining to Polanski. I imagine if he is out on bail in Switzerland, he is likely to flee back to France. Many Americans think Ted Kennedy did no wrong, many Frenchmen think the same about Polanski.

[Bob]

Thanks for the insight on how the judicial system usually works. I repeated what I read in articles pertaining to Polanski. I imagine if he is out on bail in Switzerland, he is likely to flee back to France. Many Americans think Ted Kennedy did no wrong, many Frenchmen think the same about Polanski.

No problem, worked within the system for 33+ years.

Yea, if Polanski is given bail, he'll be in France in a nano second.

As noted, I'm a huge fan of Kennedy but he drove drunk and caused his passenger to lose her life. In my state, nobody has done that without getting some jail time. I do realize he also failed to report the incident until the next morning but, although that was cowardly as hell, it's not against any serious law (although leaving the scene of a property damage or personal injury vehicular accident is a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions).

I note that, with regard to Polanski's case, the big deal or reason that many of his supporters give is that "geez, it was so long ago...." Well, the fact it wasn't dealt with then is his fault as he's the one that committed another felony by fleeing the jurisdiction in violation of the law and his bond with the Court. Any sentencing judge would indeed take into consideration his good (or bad) works in the interim.

[WannaGo]

It doesn't surprise me that Polanski had some advance warning of what the judge intended to do at sentencing. Judicial impropriety is more common than most people think, and from what I understand of the incestuous relationship between the criminal justice system and "the industry" in LA, it probably would have surprised me more if Polanski didn't get some indication of what was going to happen.

What I keep coming back to is the nature of the offense. Regardless of the time that has passed, or his good works in the interim, he committed a deliberate assault on a child. This was not an, Oops, I thought she was of age and just got carried away. Certain types of offenses must be punished, no matter how much time has passed, and this is one of them. The fact that he compounded his crime by fleeing the country only makes it worse, and as one of the other posters noted, he shouldn't then benefit from his own further criminal actions.

The one thing that really puzzles me is that there have been no other reports of victims coming forward, either in the U.S. or in Europe. His actions leading up to the actual assault -- befriending the mother, offering to do good things for the child, coming up with reasons to have multiple contacts with the child, giving her drugs and alcohol -- all are consistent with pedophile grooming behavior. It is not common for someone with pedophilic tendencies to live as long as he has with only a single victim.

[smoker]

I don't think that overall he is a pedophile. I think that he may have tendencies in that direction that can come out under certain stressful conditions. My feeling, he was temporarily nuts when this assault occured.

As to grabbing him, I do think there should be some time limit on the cops for grabbing you, particularly if there is no evidence of any other crime in the interim.

[lvdkeyes]

Should that also have applied to the Nazi or other war criminals?

[WannaGo]

I agree with a statute of limitations on many crimes...but never on crimes of violence, which this was. Take a few minutes to read over what Polanski did, and you'll see this was not a momentary acting out, but plays more like a deliberate plan.

[Bob]

I agree with a statute of limitations on many crimes...but never on crimes of violence, which this was. Take a few minutes to read over what Polanski did, and you'll see this was not a momentary acting out, but plays more like a deliberate plan.

The statute of limitations doesn't apply here as he was convicted (by pleading guilty) and fled the jurisdiction. Even if he fled before he was arrested, the statute of limitations is tolled while you're out of the jurisdiction (the jurisdiction being California).

[smoker]

The thing is he wouldn't have pled guilty if he'd known the judge wasn't going to honor the terms of the plea bargain, and given the state of California law at the time it's unlikely that he would have been convicted at trial.

[Beer Chang]

From the Op Ed page of today's The Nation one of Bangkok's two English language daily papers.

TELL IT AS IT IS

The Roman Polanski story that isn't just about Roman Polanski

By Pornpimol Kanchanalak

Published on October 1, 2009

"EVERYONE'S a bottomless pit of something," said a cartoon caption in the New Yorker this past June. The Roman Polanski story illustrates this aphorism perhaps more than most.

There is no mystery about what actually happened, what Polanski did on the night of March 10, 1977 at the home of his friend, actor Jack Nicholson. That is the only thing everybody agrees upon, and it is a well-documented public record. However, opinion on this emotionally charged case often goes to the extreme.

The girl at the centre of the case, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), was at the time, a 13-year-old beauty aspiring to be an actress/model in Hollywood, where there are no boundaries to decadent self-indulgence. The night she was raped was the second night of a "photo-shoot" arranged and agreed upon by her mother. According to her court testimony, Polanski made a move on her on the first night, when she said no to his indiscretion. But she went back to the second session and was left alone with him. One would wonder what kind of a parent would allow that to happen. But fame and the lure of money can often be blinding.

Polanski never disputed the six criminal charges, all but one of which (statutory rape of a minor, which was the less serious crime than the rest) were dropped in exchange for his plea bargain. The presiding elderly judge - a media savvy and attention-craving man - then changed his mind and reneged on the bargain. There was then a lingering question about the prosecutor "coaching" the trial judge to return an imprisonment and deportation conviction instead of probation, upon which all parties had agreed earlier. Under such a threat, Polanski fled the United States, which at that time he considered his home, to France, and never returned.

After more than 30 years as a fugitive, Polanski, now 76, was arrested in Zurich. His arrest has brought reaction, both positive and negative, from the world over. The Swiss are divided over the issue, and the French next door are royally irked. To his supporters, his artistic talents and contributions outweigh the crime he committed.

Meanwhile, Samantha Geimer, who is now 45 and married with three children, says she has forgiven Polanski and wants him to be forgiven by others. She said what he did to her was wrong, and she believed he realised it was wrong. She asked to meet him again and he agreed. They met in Paris near his home two years ago. To Samantha, the meeting was a catharsis, and more importantly a closure. She had said many times that the media and the unending attention to her and her case had made her life hell. She said she had made peace with Polanski, with herself, and wanted everybody to leave her alone for the sake of her family.

The tortured life of Polanski was used by some to explain his predicament and his action. Some entertain the hope that if people knew more abut the man and what he went through in his life, they could understand and forgive him, and the law would absolve him.

Born in France to an agnostic Jewish father and Russian emigre Catholic mother, Polanski moved with his parents to Poland when World War II broke out. His father was imprisoned in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, his mother in Auschwitz. His father survived, but his mother died. Polanski's childhood ordeal during his parents' incarceration was one of abject poverty and acute fear of deportation. He lived the life of a vagabond in the Krakow ghetto before being helped by Polish Catholic families to escape expatriation.

The gruesome murder in 1977 of his American wife - actress Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant with Polanski's first child- by members of Charles Manson cult. After the murder, Polanski was described by his close friends as a shattered man. He said his time with Tate was the happiest of his life. She gave him the security he never had. He said everybody knew how beautiful Sharon was, but they did not know how good she was. At a time when he was living a life of hopes and dreams, with boundless optimism and opportunity, it was pulled from under him in an act of vicious and senseless butchery. Everything good, gone too soon.

Polanski's movies - "Chinatown", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Pianist" to name a few - have one common characteristic: they are hard to watch. They are disturbing, and tend to focus on the darker themes of alienation and evil. The extreme violence experienced by Polanski throughout his life is reflected in his films - but he has nonetheless won accolades around the world. Critics call him one of the greatest directors of film noir.

It has been said that artists dwell in a different moral universe than the rest of us. The misogyny, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual predilection, recklessness, and deviancy are part of the mythology, and often considered a qualifying factor. But do they constitute a legal and even moral defence? The media circus, the bad judge, the zealous and unscrupulous prosecutor, and even Polanski's own phobia about being in captivity … can they be used as justification for his jumping bail and fleeing? Does talent and accomplishment exonerate wrongdoing? Is he a special case to whom most ground rules do not apply?

Look beyond the Polanski case, and we see many similar ones closer to home. We have a fugitive former prime minister who is a supposed champion of the poor and downtrodden, who has done good things for the country, as well as - according to many - not-so-good things. We have individuals who make horrible noises about defamation and injustice and inequality, who, caught up in the "hero racket", have also fled the country. Many of these individuals - who are long on rhetoric and short on real contributions to society - never stop fuelling the fires back home, aiming to rip society into pieces to make it pay the price for crimes it did not commit, usually against them. Theirs cannot be a life of peace.

For Polanski and all of us, there will be a time to face the music, a time for closure. It is necessary for life to move on. To make do and mend seems to be the only manageable dictum of our time. As Polanski's case has demonstrated, one can run, and even hide, but not forever.

[Bob]

The thing is he wouldn't have pled guilty if he'd known the judge wasn't going to honor the terms of the plea bargain, and given the state of California law at the time it's unlikely that he would have been convicted at trial.

Smoker, I can fully understand that - presuming that, as part of the plea bargain placed on the record in court, there was any part of the deal that said he was guaranteed "such and such" sentence. Do you know that to be the case?

I'm not sure what you mean by "given the state of California law at the time." I read the transcript of the girl's testimony to the grand jury and I, for one, would have bet a jury would have nailed him. In spite of a few notorius trials, the jury rarely gets it wrong.

[smoker]

At the time you were allowed to bring the girl's sexual history and "intent" for the encounter into evidence.

The girl apparently had an extensive sexual history and was brought to the house by her mother who told her to do anything she had to do to get a part in one of his movies.

Now, it's seriously unfair, but at the time, it's entirely possible that Polanski could have claimed he was set up by the girl and her parents for blackmail/civil suit purposes and got at least one member of the jury to buy it.

That's why the prosecutor's office was willing to plead this down to unlawful sexual contact with a minor instead of Rape One.

[WannaGo]

I think someone else here mentioned it, but you should check out the transcript of his plea hearing at the Smoking Gun. It's made very clear to Polanski in that hearing that there is no guarantee the judge will abide by the prosecution's sentencing recommendation.

What you'll see in the transcript is routine in plea hearings. The judge (although in this case, it seems to be the prosecutor doing it in front of the judge...California apparently has different procedure than Florida) explains to the defendant that the sentence is at the discretion of the judge, within the guidelines of the law, and queries the defendant to make sure he understands that.

This is the same chance any defendant takes in making a deal...judges don't typically deviate from the recommendation, but I've seen it happen more than once. Any attorney who tells his client otherwise is giving bad legal advice. Fleeing because you think the judge may give you a harsher sentence than you negotiated is no more acceptable than fleeing to avoid prosecution in the first place. It wouldn't work for some black kid slinging crack on the corner, so it shouldn't work for Polanski.

I have to agree with smoker; he probably should have taken his chances at trial because he could have had a shot at an acquittal. Rape cases were treated very differently then, and California justice, in particular, has never been sure, neither then nor now. Had Polanski's lawyer managed to seat a jury of women -- who tend toward judgment of the victim in rape cases -- he might have gotten a walk.

The prosecutor must have had qualms about the strength of his case to make the deal that he did, but Polanski also must have had his own doubts to cop a plea.

[Bob]

This is the same chance any defendant takes in making a deal...judges don't typically deviate from the recommendation, but I've seen it happen more than once.

That's true and I've seen it happen many times too - but it's always been based on the pre-sentence report unearthing some nasty things (like other crimes or proclivities) or something the defendant did since the plea was accepted. And it works both ways - I've seen judges give less than the recommended sentence where good things were unearthed by the report.

For those that don't know, a defendant, after entering a plea (or after being found guilty at trial) goes through a pre-sentence investigation conducted usually by a probation officer. That officer then writes a report and then recommends a sentence in writing - and oftentimes, if the state has sentencing guidelines, includes the calculations or ranges of times provided by those guidelines. That report and recommendation is given to the judge, prosecutor, and the defendant. Just prior to sentencing, the judge will ask the defendant if he takes any issue with any of the factual statements in the report and gives the defendant (or, oftentimes, his counsel) the opportunity to correct any errors. The prosecutor is essentially asked the same thing although they usually don't have much to say as the prosecutor usually isn't involved in the pre-sentence investigation. Then the judge announces the sentence (and that's the first time anybody knows what it will be - which continues to beg the question for me as to how Polanski or his counsel "knew" what the judge might do). And, I'd note, in my experience, the judge's first consideration of what the sentence will be is either right before the hearing when he reads the pre-sentence report and/or when he arrives on the bench and decides at that point in time.

In probably 95% of the cases, the recommendation is followed by the court rather blindly.

[Beer Chang]

I'd like the USA to set up a deal with some out of the way country that needs the money to take our prisoners. We'd pay let's say 25K per prisoner.

No prisoner would be forced to go, but some might prefer living as a free man in Somalia rather than locked up for life in Leavenworth.

Penalty for returning to the USA would be death.

[smoker]

If we send them to Somalia they might become pirates.

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing.

I love that we live in a world that still has pirates.

[Beer Chang]

Today in a Washington Post editorial it was said if Roman is really innocent he should have no problem agreeing to extradition.

What a load of crap.

Guilty men sometimes go free and innocent men wrongly incarcerated.

[lvdkeyes]

He has already admitted his guilt.

[Beer Chang]

Why did he go to Switzerland in the first place?

Stupid move.

[Wino]

Why did he go to Switzerland in the first place?

Stupid move.

From what I have read, he has been to Switzerland many times without any problems. It is reported, he even owns a chalet in Switzerland. The problem in this instance, was the fact he was going to receive a lifetime achievement award. The organizers advertized this fact on the internet, thinking it would draw people to the event. I guess the powers that be, saw this news and decided to force the Swiss government to arrest Polanski.

[smoker]

Today in a Washington Post editorial it was said if Roman is really innocent he should have no problem agreeing to extradition.

What a load of crap.

Guilty men sometimes go free and innocent men wrongly incarcerated.

And innocent men sometimes plead guilty to reduced charges if they think it will save them 50 years in prison.

[Beer Chang]

And innocent men sometimes plead guilty to reduced charges if they think it will save them 50 years in prison.

Exactly, can't risk the roll of the dice and end up for years and years in some nightmareish prison with violent gangs.

On the other hand, a year in Club Fed wouldn't be all that bad.

[Bob]

And innocent men sometimes plead guilty to reduced charges if they think it will save them 50 years in prison.

I suppose that has happened on rare occasion. I've never known it to happen but maybe it has. I remember one of the quotes from a famous Denver criminal lawyer who said something to the effect: My record was as good as Perry Mason's but none of my clients were innocent.