Should Switzerland extradite Roman Polanski to stand trial for alledged child sexual abuse (rape)?

Yes he needs to be brought to justice

Yes. it was a travesty that he escaped justice for all of this time. It has been shown to be a pattern with him.

Maybe they should, but they aren’t.

is this a serious question?

Yes!

Even if it wasn’t for the actual crime he admitted to committing, he skipped out of the country before his sentencing! He and his lawyer knew that the Los Angeles DA and the presiding judge decided to give him serious time for what he’d done. All his whining about the court changing its mind and reneging on the original deal was (and is) no excuse to flee.

He’s a fugitive, and for that alone, he needs to be extradited.

Yes. He thinks he is above the law and because he has money, can escape to another country and not be punished. Rape is a felony, not a misdemeanor.

Absolutely they should. Quite a few in Hollywood have come to Polanski’s defense saying it was just the way things were then. I can’t believe anyone today would say such things. You can bet your a$$ that if it were anyone else (not celebrity) that had done this they would have been sent back years ago.

Well of course!!

Grrr I hate child molesters.

If he gets off, do you know what message that sends? “As long as you make kick-ass films and have oodles of money, you can drug and rape little girls and get away with it.” Lovely.

That’s NOT a good message to send. People need to be held accountable for their actions. It doesn’t matter that the victim says “let him go”...still doesn’t make it right. I don’t care if it happens 3 minutes ago or 30 years ago it’s still rape of a child.

As far as I know about him, the trial has already been done, he simply left the country before the sentencing was imposed. So he should be extradited to be given his sentencing, not for him to stand trial again, as the first trial has not been concluded yet. I care not who he is nor what he’s done cinematographically speaking. He committed a crime (he pleaded guilty to the crime of unlawful sexual intercourse as a part of his plea bargain) and deserves to pay the price for it, end of story.

I know we have to keep saying “alleged” and “charged with”, but if he was innocent, wouldn’t he just come back here to clear his name? Of course he should be extradited!

Switzerland is a banking country that has traditionally looked the other way at a wide variety of questionable behavior, just so they can retain the accounts of the wealthy. I don’t know what their law is, but they do have a supposedly neutral policy in terms of alliances. Perhaps they have no extradition treaties with any other country, or those extradition treaties are limited to certain things, where they agree with the legal process in the country seeking the extradition.

Should they extradite him? Well, if you believe justice was served in the US, that’s a no-brainer. Will he be? Now there’s a head-scratcher.

The Swiss’ argument rests on their request to see some of the paperwork of secret testimony in the case where the judge was going to neg the original plea bargain, paperwork which the Justice Department and the LA courts refused to give them. So in the determination of the Swiss courts, unless there was evidence otherwise, the time served in the psych ward was Polanski’s full sentence, so he’s a free man as far as they’re concerned. In other words, the LA courts messed this one up big time.

OTOH, just because a defendant and the State agree to a plea bargain in a case (and Polanski pled to a much lesser crime than he is alleged to have committed), the presiding judge doesn’t have to accept it, and in Polanski’s case, the judge had decided that 42 days in a psych ward was not going to be time served. When Polanski would come back to court for a hearing, the judge was going to put the plea bargain aside and try him for the more serious charge of rape. Polanski got wind of the judge’s decision and fled.

Maybe someone will send in a hit squad. That could be fun. We could make it into a move!

Polanski is a filthy, cowardly pig who molests children. He’s cowardly because he DID plead guilty then took off when things looked bad for him. The filthy pig part is just evident by his actions.

I must admit, I like his movies…but since when is making good movies a valid excuse for molesting kids? It makes no sense to me. Hollywood disgusts me with the way that they are defending this pig.
Switzerland should be ashamed of themselves too. They are guilty too.

I’m sorry I just REALLY have a sore spot for scum who molest children

Out of curiosity, I did some googling and found this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4706619.stm

The quote that struck me:
“I find it amazing that a man who lives in France can sue a magazine that is published in America in a British courtroom.”

I guess this guy is above the law. So much for justice.

I believe that Polanski should be extradited to face the consequences.

I do not believe any other country has the right to override a sovereign country’s laws and judicial practices with respect to extradition, Switzerland is a sovereign country and the USA is not permitted to make or change Swiss laws or to dictate the decisions of that country’s courts.

The USA, despite its beliefs to the contrary, does not really run the world!

Celebrity or not he should have to face justice. Anybody reading this question right now would have been in jail long ago.

Minority opinion here.
No, he shouldn’t be extradited under the present circumstances.
At the time, he made a deal with the DA to plead guilty, but receive no prison time.
When they went to the judge, the judge accepted his plea, but threw out the agreement, so that Polanski would face prison time. The Judge broke the deal, so Polanski shouldn’t have been held to his plea.
I am all in favor of his returning and facing a jury over what he did, but they have to throw out his plea first.

I am torn. The girl he raped does not want him to go to prison, she wishes the whole issue would be dropped, and I want her voice to count. It does seem he had a thing for very young girls, which repulses me, but at this point I don’t know if he needs to be “brought to justice” I guess it depends on how you look at justice. It does not seem that the girl he raped had her life destroyed by the event. If that had been the case I would be more inclined to make him suffer as she did. If she had been imprisoned in her mind by the events, then I would be for imprisoning him. But, I guess we are just talking about him coming back to stand trial, right? Not necessarly that he will go to jail? But, pretty much everyone knows he did it, there does not seem to be a question about it.

Courts sometimes make strange decisions, not only in Switzerland. Recently, a Cleveland court refused to extradite Nazi death camp guard Demjanjuk to Germany. An arrest warrant in Germany claims that Demjanjuk was responsible to some 29,000 deaths in Sobibor.

Later, another court overruled the decision of the Cleveland court. Maybe the same will happen with Polanski.

Just give him a Swiss Necktie and be done with it. :|

Nope, bygones…..