jeff wrote:
jeff wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote:

My guess is Polanski will never be extradited. Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza has already ruled that
"substantial misconduct" occurred in the trial when the judge
arranged a plea agreement and then planned to renege on it.
The only reason he didn't throw the whole thing out was because
Polanski failed to show up in person. Polanski's lawyers were
in the process of appealing that when he was arrested.

Polanski will have to stay in Switzerland for awhile, the
extradition will fizzle and that will be that. Apparently
the state of California won't throw the case out unless
Polanski shows up in person and there's not an ice cubes
chance in hell Polanski ever does that, so back to status quo.


this is what some others "guess" will happen...

"...the prevalent view is that Polanski is going to be taken to Los
Angeles, where he will immediately be sentenced for his 1977
conviction of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and
charged with flight from justice.

He will then go to jail."

more to read from the "papers"...

"The outcry from some quarters over film director Roman Polanski's
arrest on an old California warrant for drugging and raping a
13-year-old girl is, in a word, perverse.

Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer, testified in 1977 that he forced
himself upon her. He pleaded guilty before fleeing the U.S. Now a
45-year-old mother of three, Geimer has stood by her story while
forgiving Polanski. So no question that this celebrated man of cinema is
guilty of a depraved crime.

The facts are these: Polanski lured ninth-grader Geimer to Jack
Nicholson's house for a photo shoot. He gave her champagne and Quaaludes
and raped her. After agreeing to a plea bargain, he became worried that
the judge would slam him harder. So the acclaimed maker of such films as
"Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown" took off for Europe.

...Central to Polanski's claim to martyrdom is an HBO documentary,
"Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." The film suggests that the judge
and prosecutors engaged in misconduct, in effect, deceiving him into
taking a plea. Perhaps that's the case. If so, he has a clear option:
Stand trial and face the full weight of the law."

NY Daily News


"Roman Polanski raped a child," said Kate Harding in Salon. "That's the
detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it
was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after
32 years in 'exile.'" Any legal misconduct revealed in a documentary
doesn't change the fact that even Polanski admitted that he had unlawful
sex with a minor. Rushing past that point to find reasons to forgive
Polanski now is "twisted."


Judge H. Lee Sarokin, Retired in 1996 after 17 years on the federal
bench...in the 9/30/09 edition of the huffington post:

"We must start with the fact that he is guilty of a serious crime and is
a fugitive. It is alleged that his motive for flight was because the
presiding judge "reneged" on the plea bargain respecting his sentence
and threatened to impose a longer sentenced than agreed. I do not know
what happened here, but judges are not usually parties to plea
agreements. I accepted pleas for 15 years, and in each and every
instance, the defendant was advised that the court was not bound by any
agreement and the sentence was in the sole discretion of the court.
Pleas were then entered and accepted on that basis. My guess is that the
judge here indicated informally that he was not going to follow the
recommendation of the parties, and then Polanski skipped. Certainly this
scenario is not a defense to extradition.

There is also a suggestion that there was some misconduct on the part of
the judge in respect to the sentencing. That, of course, is a matter
that could be presented to the court, although it is difficult to
understand how it would affect a sentence that was not imposed or
served. Polanski's lawyers attempted to present this claim of
misconduct, but it was denied based upon Polanski's refusal to appear.
The court concluded that he could not avail himself of the system while
defying it. He can raise that claim by presenting himself to the court.

The extradition is also opposed by his supporters on the grounds of
delay. At first blush this has a great deal of appeal, until the
argument is examined. It would mean that the fugitive who is most
successful in eluding capture gains an advantage over one who is less
successful, which, in turn, would mean that the wealthier criminal would
have a greater chance of avoiding extradition than the poorer one. I had
a case in which a bank robber sued the FBI for injuries he sustained in
a shoot-out, claiming that the FBI should have arrested him sooner and
the injuries would have been avoided! The same argument is being made
here -- that Polanski should have been arrested sooner, and since he was
not, he can avoid extradition.

It is also pointed out that the victim does not wish the charges
pursued. Here again, this is an argument to made in respect to the
future sentence, not the arrest and extradition. One can well understand
her desire to put the matter to an end.

Polanski's supporters point to his great works over the years, the
tragedies in his life and the lack of any subsequent wrongdoing.
Likewise, all of these matters are appropriate considerations for
sentencing or subsequent proceedings, but they cannot serve to dismiss
the charges for which he has pleaded guilty and for which he is now a
fugitive.

In today's New York Times, Robert Harris asks in an op-ed piece in
respect to the proceedings against Polanski "So cui bono -- who
benefits?" The answer is the judicial system. Roman Polanski committed a
serious crime and then escaped punishment. Everything that he has done
since that day is relevant in enhancing or reducing his punishment, but
none of it warrants dismissal. To do otherwise would put things
backwards -- it would reward the successful fugitive and punish the
legal system."


here's another juicy "papers" read from the daily beast in LA... oj
prosecutor marcia clark...reporting what someone "who was there" said to
her:

"I lied," Wells told me yesterday, referring to his comments in the
movie that he told [Judge Rittenband] 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 evaluation — 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."