Looks like Polanski will get away again.

[Aepervius]

So in other words, the Swiss were requesting something absolutely absurd and irrelevant, because they could. That doesn't exactly make me feel great about their actions here. So sure, you can argue the operated within the letter of the law, which apparently means they can simply refuse to extradite anyone for the heck of it, if they so desire.




No, but there is such a thing as operating in good faith.

That is not what drkitten said. He (she?) said that if they wanted they could do it, as the treaty does not LIMIT the docs which can be requested.

But get real here, the swiss asked something they thought was required to respect the spirit of their own law IMHO.

And anyway, if you dislike people respecting the letter of the law, ask the US why they did not unseal the docs, after all why repsect the letter of the law. That would have been the easiest solution.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

For anyone curious, here is the prosecution's reasoning for opposing the release of the sealed testimony. It is very detailed

 

[Typicallucas]

Cruel and unusual punishment.

The exile and loneliness eats at them. They start doing crazy things; corks on their hats, swimming with sharks, throwing bent sticks at themselves. Their speech becomes distorted and unintelligible.

Then you end up with a giant mad house, filled with the degenerate spawn of the lunatics and criminals you originally housed there.

All in all, it's probably better just to humanely drown them, like kittens.

Hi-larious

 

[Aepervius]

The Swiss stated why they wanted the document: to verify if the judge had "promised" Polanski an additional 48-day sentence, which would not meet the 6-month requirement of the treaty.

My point is that even if the Swiss had that document, and verified that information, it is completely irrelevent. Polanski was never sentenced to begin with, and what a judge might have sentenced him to, had he not fled, has no bearing on that fact. He can be sentenced to up to 2 years, which more than meets the 6 month requirement.

The Swiss have unilaterally decided that his sentence is less than 6 months, when the entire point of his extradition is so he can be sentenced.

At that point I have to ask : what do you know of the swiss law which make you think this is not the local custom to be so ?

You know that not all country have the same law and requirement as the US, right ?

 

[Aepervius]

For anyone curious, here is the prosecution's reasoning for opposing the release of the sealed testimony. It is very detailed

I get a blank PDF. Maybe ovrloaded ?

I am off to bed, I ll try to read that tommorow.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

That is not what drkitten said. He (she?) said that if they wanted they could do it, as the treaty does not LIMIT the docs which can be requested.

But get real here, the swiss asked something they thought was required to respect the spirit of their own law IMHO.

Not the spirit "of their own law," the spirit of their treaty with the U.S. That is the issue at hand. Polanski has not broken any laws in Switzerland.

Funny you have yet to offer any reasoning why the document was relevant. At best, what you state above is that the Swiss can stonewall any extradition if they so desire by requesting unnecessary documents, and that technically that might comply with the treaty. I hate to think that is the case here (I certainly have nothing against the Swiss, and barring a tax spat here and there, Switzerland and the U.S. generally are on quite good terms), but you don't seem to offer any defense other than, "well, they can do it if they want."

At that point I have to ask : what do you know of the swiss law which make you think this is not the local custom to be so ?

Are you suggesting that the Swiss reserve the right to sentence people who commit crimes and are tried and convicted in other countries in lieu of extradition? I seriously doubt that.

 

[Matthew Best]

The prosecution reasoning kindly linked by Mr WithAPulley includes this:

Additionally, the People specifically informed the Swiss that "should Swiss authorities conclude that further information is required to adjudicate this matter," the People "stand ready to provide supplementary information in aid of the United States' request for the extradition of Roman Raymond Polanski."

So if they were standing ready to provide the information, why did they not actually do so? Or am I reading the link wrong?

 

[SezMe]

I think you have forgotten it is the USA that applied for extradition, not the Swiss.

I think you have forgotten it is the Swiss who asked for sealed documents.

 

[SezMe]

The Swiss are under no obligation to respect the decision of a US court. Or of a California court.

Indeed, that's the whole purpose of extradition proceedings, is to give the Swiss all the information they want so that they will agree to respect any particular decision of interest.

All? Are you suggesting that if the Swiss request sealed court documents, the US should turn them over, ignoring the seal? Why?

It's neither necessary nor appropriate for the Swiss to interact directly with the relevant state court -- in fact, it would probably violate US law for them to do so (foreign relations are explicitly a federal issue).

According to Darat's quote in #223, it is a US court which has affirmed the retention of the seal. This, it would seem, takes it out of the hands of the California Court system.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

So if they were standing ready to provide the information, why did they not actually do so? Or am I reading the link wrong?

They could have provided information without providing an entire document. In fact, given that the Swiss seem to have knowledge of the content of that document (since they state that the document "should" show that the judge intended to sentence Polanski to 48 extra days), it appears they were provided with information from somewhere. It is also still unclear as to whether the Swiss themselves ever requested the document. As late as the end of April, they were stating publicly that they didn't need it. In fact, those statements were cited by the judge as one of the reasons for not unsealing the documents. Polanski's lawyers certainly requested them, but it's unclear as to if or why the Swiss changed their minds.

I think this whole thing is a red herring anyway. Even if the U.S. confirmed that the document proved the judge had intended on sentencing Polanski to 48 days, it is completely irrelevant, since that sentence was never carried out, and that judge is no longer on the bench (or alive). They were demanding a document to "disprove" something that had nothing to do with the issue.

 

[qayak]

Nobody does know that for sure. Actually the only certainty is that the US justice departement refused to provide a document to the swiss authority. This is *ALL* we know. Nothing more. The rest is really speculation on all side.

Agreed but the Swiss position was that according to the information at their disposal, Polinski had served his sentence as per the original agreement. The only thing that could have changed that position was the information in the document they requested. With no time outstanding, he can't be extradited.

Or at least that was my take on the whole mess.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

This. Legal technicalities or no legal technicalities, what Polanski committed was unquestionably rape by any civilized definition of the word. Christ, even your average frat boy knows that if you drug a girl and have sex with her while she says "no," it's rape. The fact that the victim was 13 at the time just makes it that much more outrageous that he's gotten away with it.

I will clear up this matter of fact one again: It has never been proven, or decided by a court, that the girl said "no". She made a statement saying she said "no", and Polanski made a statement saying the sex was entirely consensual, so it's her word against his. He was not convicted of rape, he was convicted of unlawful (consensual) sex with a minor.

Since there are serious questions about the truth of other allegations the victim made, I suspect a major reason he wasn't tried for rape was that the evidence to convict him on that charge didn't exist.

Spin? Spin? You have got to be kidding. He plead guilty to California Penal Code Section 261.5 (http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/261.5.html), which is equivalent to statutory rape. Please go ahead and read the penal code above, we'll wait.

You're still doing exactly the same spinning. You want to call the crime Polanksi was convicted of "statutory rape" rather than "unlawful sex" because that's what similar crimes are sometimes called elsewhere, and then you want to shorten it to "rape" which is a different crime.

This is the sleazy argumentative tactic of equivocation: Using a word which can mean two things and switching which definition you are using around to deceive.

Polanski admitted to providing her a part of a Quaalude, so that's not in dispute.

Correct. I must have missed it when someone in this thread said otherwise. Or maybe you're just making "two plus two is four!" statements to make it look like you are saying something relevant?

She said "no", you can choose to not believe her if you want, but I have to question why you would automatically assume a 13-year old would lie about it, while a 40-something old sexual predator wouldn't.

We had the spin, we had the equivocation and now we have the straw man.

I didn't say that she lied about that point, nor did I say that she didn't lie. I don't know which of those possibilities is the correct one and neither do you.

We do know for a fact that the girl lied about some parts of her accusation because the forensics contradict her, whereas we do not know for a fact that Polanski lied at all. However the claim that she said "no" is not a claim that we know is false, so it's still possible and arguably even likely that Polanski did rape her.

That's a mirror you're looking at Kevin. Coming from someone who makes bizarre leaps to turn a plate of buffalo wings into mass murder, this is hysterical. You're the Nadia Comăneci of child molester apologists.

Oh dear. Look, if you are still butthurt about some ancient thread go back there and post some more in it. Don't stalk me in unrelated threads and lie about what I said elsewhere. This thread is about the Polanski case.

Use of drugs + 13 year old victim always equals rape.

Go tell it to the state of California. Apparently they missed the memo. I'm sure they'll be glad that you popped up to correct them. Why don't you run along, find out what the California law actually says on that point, and then find out whether what we know Polanski did counts as rape under California law?

Here's a clue: He didn't get charged on that basis, and that's probably because people who actually know something about California law didn't think they could make it stick.

He admitted to sex with a girl too young to give consent. That makes him a rapist in my book regardless of whatever legalese you want to apply to it.

You can state that an orange is a banana in your book if you like, but it doesn't make it so.

Every jurisdiction I'm aware of has a clear legal distinction between the crime of consensual sex with a minor and the crime of raping a minor, and it punishes raping a minor much more severely. As it should do.

This semantic quibbling is like insisting that you can't call a person found guilty of manslaughter a "killer".

You can call someone guilty of manslaughter a killer, just as you can call Polanski a statutory rapist. (Although you do cross the line into error or lying if you call him a rapist without that vital qualification). It's less accurate than calling him guilty of unlawful sex with a minor, but some people do dearly love to spin it as "statutory rape" because they like the less accurate and more emotive term.

It is, however, definitely spin. It's a deliberate attempt to shade language to create a false or misleading impression. I'm not saying you can't spin, I'm just calling you out for doing it.

 

[qayak]

At best, what you state above is that the Swiss can stonewall any extradition if they so desire by requesting unnecessary documents, and that technically that might comply with the treaty.

The document was most definitely necessary to make a case for extradition. Without it, the only agreement was the original plea bargain which Polanski had already met. With no time left on his sentence they can't extradite.

 

[qayak]

All? Are you suggesting that if the Swiss request sealed court documents, the US should turn them over, ignoring the seal? Why?

I don't know that anyone has said that but, if the documents required to extradite are requested and refused, one can hardly complain that the extradition failed.

According to Darat's quote in #223, it is a US court which has affirmed the retention of the seal. This, it would seem, takes it out of the hands of the California Court system.

And by extention, it is out of the hands of the Swiss courts as well. People should be complaining about the US court that refused to lift the seal. On the other hand, if they had a good reason to refuse, then people shouldn't have an issue with any of it. "That's the way the cookie crumbles" as my mother used to say.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

The document was most definitely necessary to make a case for extradition. Without it, the only agreement was the original plea bargain which Polanski had already met. With no time left on his sentence they can't extradite.

There was no "original plea bargain" that was ever carried out. Polanski's time in a psych prison was pre-sentencing. They made a preliminary agreement on a plea bargain, which included Polanski pleading guilty (which he did), and which also included him acknowledging directly that the judge was not bound by the plea bargain. Polanski got word that the judge was not going to honor the sentencing portion of the plea bargain, and fled prior to any sentencing. Since he fled, he was never sentenced.

Maybe the judge would have sentenced him to less than 6 months -- in fact, it seems likely -- but the point is, the judge never got the opportunity to sentence him to anything, so what he might have sentenced him to is wholly irrelevant.

 

[SezMe]

With no time left on his sentence they can't extradite.

qayak, why is it necessary to repeat this over and over. THERE WAS NO SENTENCE. Yeah, I'm shouting.

 

[qayak]

qayak, why is it necessary to repeat this over and over. THERE WAS NO SENTENCE. Yeah, I'm shouting.

Without shouting, the Swiss and many others seem to disagree with you.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

Without shouting, the Swiss and many others seem to disagree with you.

You can disagree with gravity too, but that won't make you float.

Polanski's own lawyers requested to have him sentenced in-absentia. Presumably, if they thought that he had already been sentenced, they wouldn't ask for him to be sentenced.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I concede it's a semantic argument. The language of the law under discussion does not include the word "rape". If you call what Polanski admitted to "rape", then you are simply incorrect according to the law of the state in which the act occurred. In California, "rape" is one order of crimes; "unlawful sex" is another.

I submit this information not because I side with Polanski or wish to see him cleared or freed. I'm correcting the misuse of a word.

Words have meanings outside of courtrooms, you know. If we're not arguing a case inside a courtroom, I feel no obligation to speak using strict adherence to legal definitions.

Or, are you prepared to "correct" the misuse of the word "line" in any application that doesn't involve an infinitely long set of points?

 

[ZirconBlue]

Without shouting, the Swiss and many others seem to disagree with you.

Only those who have no idea about how the law works, or the specifics of this case believe that sentencing has occurred. If "the Swiss" deciding this case believe that, then they are incompetent.