Roman Polanski still being hounded by L.A. County prosecutors

With the state Legislature forced to make dramatic cuts in the prison budget and a three-judge federal panel having recently ordered California lawmakers to release as many as 40,000 inmates in response to the scandalous overcrowding of the California state prison system, it seems like an especially inauspicious time for the L.A. County district attorney's office to be spending some of our few remaining tax dollars seeing if it can finally, after all these years, put Roman Polanski behind bars.

As you've probably heard, the French-born filmmaker, who won a best director Oscar in absentia for the 2002 film "The Pianist," was arrested by Swiss police late Saturday as he arrived to accept an award at the Zurich Film Festival. At the request of the L.A. County district attorney's office, Polanski has been placed in custody -- the official term is "provisional detention for extradition'' -- awaiting a U.S. decision to make a formal extradition request.

Polanski has been living in France for the past three decades, directing films and raising a family with actress Emanuelle Seigner. He has been a fugitive from justice in the U.S. since 1978, when he fled the country rather than stand charges of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. The case has been a cause celebre for years, with charges and counter-charges rocketing back and forth, many involving the controversial efforts of the original presiding judge to put Polanski safely away behind bars. It added another dramatic chapter to a life of tragedy for the filmmaker, who fled the Krakow ghetto during the Nazi occupation not long after his mother was sent to the gas chambers. In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, then pregnant with Polanski's child, was murdered by the Charles Manson family at a hillside home in Los Angeles. 

Meanwhile, Polanski's victim, Samantha Geimer, long ago announced that she had forgiven the filmmaker for his transgressions and supported various efforts to have the case against him dismissed. I don't think that you'd find many people who would approve of Polanski's behavior, which was disgusting -- he drugged his victim with champagne and Quaaludes before raping her during a 1977 photo session at Jack Nicholson's house.

But at a time when California is shredding the safety net that protects the poor and the unemployed, not to mention the budget of the public school system, you'd hope that L.A. County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex crime, especially one that Polanski's victim wants to put behind her. As Marina Zenovich's 2008 documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," ably chronicled, the original prosecution of Polanski was marred by all sorts of embarrassing missteps and strange behavior, largely by Laurence Rittenband, the original presiding judge. 

Still, actions have consequences, and Polanski's sins have not been forgotten. He has been barred from returning to the U.S. and prevented from traveling to other countries, including England, because of extradition issues. His career has clearly suffered from his inability to work in Hollywood, where he made such celebrated films as "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby." He has been embraced by many -- having won a number of awards over the years -- but also shunned by a number of detractors. As he put it in his autobiography: "I am widely regarded, I know, as an evil, profligate dwarf."

But he also has his stout defenders, notably French Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterrand, who said over the weekend that he was "dumbfounded" by Polanski's arrest in Switzerland, adding that he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them."

In the coming weeks, the Polanski affair will no doubt become a tabloid sensation, with op-ed moralists, excitable bloggers and the Glenn Becks of the world noisily weighing in on the propriety of his possible prosecution. Some will say Polanski is a predator whose punishment is long overdue. Others will argue that it's the height of  folly to be stalking a 76-year-old man who has admitted his guilt and was long ago forgiven by his victim.

We live in an age that is so thoroughly post-modern that you can find an obvious literary antecedent for nearly every seamy media storyline. The same goes for the Polanski case, which is full of echoes of "Les Miserables," the classic Victor Hugo novel about Jean Valjean, an ex-con trying to turn his life around who is being obsessively tracked and hunted down by the Parisian police inspector Javert.

Hugo's story is a tragedy, as is the life story of Polanski, who was a fugitive as a boy and is now a fugitive as an old man. Whether the L.A. County district attorney office has its way or not, it is not a story that can have a happy ending. I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn't enough.

Video: Roman Polanski in "Chinatown."

Photo of Roman Polanski by Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images.

Comments

[Herb Muelos]

"It's all Polanski's fault!" cried John Lennon when he realized the abyss he had been sucked into by the satanist pedophile Roman Polanski.

(Rosemary's Baby - filmed in The Dakota)

[JohnGaltPodcast]

This MONSTER drugs and anally rapes a thirteen year-old girl, and you're upset that he's been "hounded"? Just how crazy ARE you people?

The Holocaust doesn't excuse it.

The murder of Sharon Tate doesn't excuse it.

Making a couple of decent movies doesn't excuse it.

Being able to hide out for thirty years thanks to some Eurotrash enablers doesn't excuse it.

But you sick SOBs want to excuse it.

Shame on you.

http://johngalt.podomatic.com/

[was a child]

Should we forgive a phedophile during the bad economy just to save cost? Should we release a child rapist by judging his past horrific life? He won Oscar, he survived the holocaust, his pregnant wife was murdered by a lunatic, he has been living in France for almost 30 years, but none of that could erase the fact that HE RAPED A CHILD. Period.

[Kevin]

This is child rape -- not statutory rape, mind you, but the old-fashioned "do it or else" kind of forcible rape. Did you miss that part? You clearly must have, because no person who pretends to be a human being could possibly countenance this crime, knowing the facts.

Let. Him. Rot.

[john smith]

amazingly naive article! is the writer of this article also a pedophile or what? the guy should be punished! what he did is unforgivable

[Patrick Thompson]

You are disgusting. Comparing his persecution by Nazis, for nothing more than the fact that he is Jewish, to the prosecution of the L.A. district attorney's office based upon the rape of a 13-year old girl, is horrific and pathetic. To imply there is a comparison is utterly disgusting. Just because this man managed to evade the police for three decades does not make his eventual capture and potential punishment a tragedy. This wasn't an affair, or a lie about an affair - you can point to conservative straw men "moralists" all day long and it doesn't change the fact that Polanski is a pedophile and rapist.

[Zan Ozimek]

Yes he has suffered so greatly over these years by not being able to engage in whirlwind world travels to quite the number of destinations he might otherwise like. For instance, he's been forced to spend his ski holiday's in Gstaad, Switzerland instead of Aspen, Colorado. When he wants to take in the symphony he has to settle for a night at the Orchestre de Paris instead of seeing the Academy of St. Martin's in London. He's been made to endure the humiliation of wintering in the isles of Greece, never able to again experience the white sands of Malibu.

Yes, clearly Polanski has suffered decades of the most awful punishment and must be forgiven. Anyone who doesn't believe so is a proletarian brute and a peasant.

[enplaned]

For any justice system to have any value at all, everyone should be subject to the same terms, whether you're a skid-row bum, a famous director or the president of the US.

You do the crime, you do the time. Doesn't matter what art, science or anything else you may have created. Polanski has been on the lam for 30 years. If he's now successfully extradited back to the US, prosecuted and convicted and does time for his crime (and there appears to be no doubt that he did, in fact, commit a crime) then justice will have been served and no one need mourn.

That Polanski has lead a constrained life for the past 30 years is no one's fault but his own.

[Hitler]

Every judge should be able to promise the moon in exchange for the defendant giving up his constitutional rights, and then say, just kidding! Think of all the money we can save. On the other hand, if we were more honest we might say freely that we don't like the Bill of Rights, at least not those that apply to criminals, and we would pass a constitutional amendment and rid ourselves of those patriarchal pests.

[Harold Beaver]

Well, here it is, 30+ years later and the LA Times and Goldstein wants us all to cry a river for the Polish/French child rapist.
He druggeed her? Yes!
He raped her? Yes!
He butt raped her? Yes!
He was convicted? Yes!
He fled punishment? Yes!
His wife was killed? Yes!
Was he part of it??????
Get a grip now!
Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time! (Robert Blake should know)
I hope Polanski has a new wife, 6'5" tall, 320 lbs, hairy, no left ear and his name is Turk.
he needs to feel what it is like to be butt raped. Only he won't be drugged.
H. Beaver