Switzerland gets formal U.S. request for Roman Polanski’s extradition

This came over the AP 10 . 21 . 2009, about 4AM this morn­ing EST: Switzer­land gets for­mal U.S. request for Roman Polanski’s extra­di­tion.

Some Thought on Roman Polanski’s Extradition

While I’m polit­i­cal, I don’t like to get polit­i­cal in this blog, but I’ll make an excep­tion.  Rather than focus on Roman Polan­ski or the the crime, I want to first focus on that thing called “The Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States,” the idea that we are a nation of laws, not men, and that one of the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our Repub­lic is “equal pro­tec­tion under the law.”

Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials and the Los Ange­les County dis­trict attor­ney have a fidu­ciary duty to uphold state and fed­eral laws.

That’s their job.

Let’s look at the Oath of Office for the Los Ange­les County Dis­trict Attorney:

Every per­son on his admis­sion shall take an oath to sup­port the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States and the Con­sti­tu­tion of the State of Cal­i­for­nia, and faith­fully to dis­charge the duties of any attor­ney at law to the best of his knowl­edge and abil­ity. A cer­tifi­cate of the oath shall be indorsed upon his license. (Ori­gin: State Bar of Cal­i­for­nia, Code Civ. Proc., §278.)

What’s the Oath of Office for every offi­cial in the United State Jus­tice Department?

I (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will sup­port and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States against all ene­mies, for­eign and domes­tic; that I will bear true faith and alle­giance to the same; that I take this oblig­a­tion freely with­out any men­tal reser­va­tion or pur­pose of eva­sion; and that I will well and faith­fully dis­charge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

So why is every­one here ask­ing Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials and the Los Ange­les County dis­trict attor­ney to turn the other way and not uphold the laws of CA and the United States (I’m assum­ing that flee­ing the coun­try is some kind of fed­eral offense that gets the F.B.I. involved)?

Jon Siegel of LAW PROF on the LOOSE sums up the case some in Hol­ly­wood have made for Polanski:

As far as I can make out, some peo­ple think Polan­ski should be let off because (a) he’s famous, (b) he’s a great artist, © he’s been through a lot in his life, (d) it’s been a long time since he com­mit­ted the crime, (e) the vic­tim has for­given him and would rather the whole thing just went away, and (f) there was some gov­ern­men­tal mis­con­duct in the ini­tial proceedings.

Siegel then effec­tively dis­man­tles each of these arguments:

I would hope we could agree that (a) and (b) are irrel­e­vant. We’ve endured a spate of celebrity crimes. Celebri­ties don’t have a license to break the laws that the rest of us have to live with. The law should be enforced even-handedly. Of course, the law is gen­er­ally more lenient on first-time offend­ers than on habit­ual crim­i­nals, so Polan­ski is enti­tled to the same break that any first-time offender who is gen­er­ally a good per­son would get. But no break for being a famous artist.

© could be rel­e­vant — we have taken to con­sid­er­ing a defendant’s harsh upbring­ing when pass­ing sen­tences — but it doesn’t get him wholly off the hook. At most it gets him a reduction.

(d) is not wholly irrel­e­vant, but it’s mostly Polanski’s own fault. The mat­ter could have been resolved 32 years ago if he hadn’t fled the juris­dic­tion, and he could have come back to face the music any time.

(e) is also not wholly irrel­e­vant, but it’s not just the vic­tim who needs pro­tec­tion; it’s also other 13-year-olds who need pro­tec­tion from other adults, includ­ing other adult celebrities.

(f) is rel­e­vant but the judge who engaged in the irreg­u­lar pro­ceed­ings has died and another judge will now be mak­ing the deci­sions about Polanski’s fate (assum­ing he gets extra­dited). So this issue is reduced.

I con­clude that Polan­ski should face the music. Again, if some 40-something accoun­tant you hadn’t heard of seduced a 13-year-old girl with alco­hol and drugs and then had sex with her, and then skipped the coun­try, I don’t think we’d be argu­ing about whether it’s unfair to catch up with him later and throw him in jail (Polanski’s Ancient His­tory).

Do I have empa­thy for Roman, for what he’s going through? Yes.

Do I have sym­pa­thy? No, I can’t.

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