{"id":733,"date":"2009-09-28T22:46:11","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T03:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=733"},"modified":"2009-09-28T22:54:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T03:54:17","slug":"the-polanski-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=733","title":{"rendered":"The Polanski Arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This effort to try to extradite Roman Polanski <\/a>seems like a bad idea.\u00a0 However bad what the Polanski of 1977 did may be, you cannot punish him.\u00a0 He no longer exists,\u00a0 worn away by half a lifetime of subsequent experiences and choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, at least one of the traditional reasons for imprisoning people, to prevent them from offending again for a while, seems pointless.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t follow celebrity careers closely as a rule, and I haven\u2019t done it with Polanski, it seems that he hasn\u2019t raped any more 13 year-olds.\u00a0 If it made any sense to imprison a man of 44 to teach him not to do it again, that rationale is unavailable against a man of 76 who has apparently not raped anyone for 32 years.\u00a0 He obviously has learned his lesson.<\/p>\n

Nor do I agree with those who feel that we must do this to prevent the law being mocked.\u00a0 We allow the law to be mocked every day, one way or another.\u00a0 It is all a question of prosecutorial discretion.\u00a0 For instance, the law is mocked every day that the criminals who committed torture in this country\u2019s name are not prosecuted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And by the same token, the notion that Polanski\u2019s celebrity should not drive prosecutorial choices rings hollow when we allow the political celebrity of criminals like the torturers of the previous administration to shield them from justice.\u00a0 What they did was at least as bad as what Polanski did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, it seems clear that there were considerable improprieties in the way the judge handled Polanski\u2019s case, and no easy mechanism to fix them; I would be uncomfortable imprisoning him unless there was a retroactive fixing of those errors to balance the retroactive nature of what the prosecutors seem to want to do here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And finally, those who feel that there is a special insult or danger to women from failing to ensnare and imprison Polanski after all these years seem to be ignoring the views of the woman involved, who does not want him further punished.\u00a0 Surely her views ought to matter.<\/p>\n

It just seems like a bad idea all around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This effort to try to extradite Roman Polanski seems like a bad idea.\u00a0 However bad what the Polanski of 1977 did may be, you cannot punish him.\u00a0 He no longer exists,\u00a0 worn away by half a lifetime of subsequent experiences and choices.\u00a0 Moreover, at least one of the traditional reasons for imprisoning people, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791],"tags":[795,794,796,793],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i-read-the-news-today","tag-extradition","tag-prosecutorial-discretion","tag-rationales-for-punishment","tag-roman-polanski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}