"Chinatown" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card

I find a lot of the commentary over Roman Polanski’s arrest this weekend very disturbing. When people say or write that Polanski should be given a pass because it was a long time ago/he’s a genius/the victim wants to drop the case/she asked for it anyway, etc., I think there’s a lot going on between the lines.

(BTW, that last one’s hilarious. So, the girl is a lying whore succubus who callously lured a middle-aged man into her web and we should take everything she says with a grain of salt… Until she says she doesn’t care if Polanski ever goes to jail. Then her words are sacrosanct.)

These are the facts: Polanski pled guilty in 1977 to unlawful sex with a minor, in this case a 13-year-old girl he was photographing for Vogue. The girl said that Polanski drugged and raped her after the creepiest photo shoot ever – read the transcript of her grand jury testimony (warning: very graphic). Some have argued that the girl could’ve been coached. And sure, that’s entirely possible. But it doesn’t matter. Because even if she’d stripped naked and begged Polanski for sex, 13-year-olds can’t consent to sex – a fact which Polanski acknowledged when he pled guilty to statutory rape. (By the way, this is what she looked like in 1977.)

So, no statute of limitations, no California-is-wasting-their-time. The prosecution was over, the verdict (Polanski’s guilty plea) was in. Polanski left the U.S. for France before his sentencing. His lawyers argue that the judge was going to ignore a plea recommendation and throw the book at Polanski, so that’s why he ran. The thing is, though, that in this country we have something called “appeals.” If you think your sentence was too harsh or there was judicial misconduct in your trial, you can contest it all the way to the Supremes.

But Polanski didn’t do that. He ran away. He could’ve appealed everything about his conviction at any time, but he hasn’t. The only person Roman Polanski has to blame for the fact that this has dragged on for 32 years is Roman Polanski.

Something else I’ve been thinking about… Last week, Susan Atkins died of cancer in prison. Atkins was the Manson Family follower who held down and stabbed Polanski’s pregnant wife Sharon Tate in July 1969. In August, the week of what should’ve been Paul Polanski’s 40th birthday, Atkins asked for a compassionate release from prison so she could die at home, and was turned down.

I’ve been wondering what Roman Polanski thought about Atkins’ request. Did he say to himself, “Ah, well, it’s been 40 years, who cares? Just let her go”? Did he tell people that the State of California had better things to do, or that she wasn’t a danger to anyone? What about when Nazi Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960? Did Polanski think to himself, “How silly! It’s been 20 years since the Nazis murdered my family. The Israelis shouldn’t have bothered.”

In other words, are Polanski and his supporters as cavalier with his own justice as they are with Samantha Geimer’s?