Roman Polanski Arrested…Again

Roman Polanski might just have to pay the piper.

Film auteur Roman Polanski was arrested while attempting to enter Switzerland for the Zurich Film Festival earlier today. He faces possible extradition to the United States where he has remained a fugitive since 1977 for having sex with a 13-year-old girl, authorities said Sunday.

This case is very, very complex. Polanski has already paid a settlement to his victim, Samantha Geimer after she sued him. Both Geimer and Polanski have asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges’ refusal to throw out his case. Polanski’s attorneys claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged. Further, speculation remains that Switzerland may be trying to placate U.S. justice department officials who have been attempting to add transparency to Switzerland’s bank account system wherein rich individuals around the world are allowed to “hide” their money in the Swiss accounts without paying taxes in their home country. (If this changes, plot points involving Swiss bank accounts in James Bond films and other espionage movies will be forever altered.)

Polanski has had his fair share of hardships between escaping genocide during WWII and the Manson family killing his pregnant wife Sharon Tate. But I personally don’t think that should exempt him from paying his debt to society. Between O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and countless others, we’ve all seen that if you have money, connections and celebrity in California, you can be above the law. I think the dismissal of Polanski’s case would just be further grist for that warped and smelly mill.

If California does decide to seek extradition for Polanski, I think they should mark the moment as a sea change wherein money and fame are no longer allowed to trump truth and justice in our judicial system. Polanski has created some amazing art in his lifetime…and he has been well compensated for it. But those things, accompanied with his hardships, do not make it OK to get a 13 year old drunk on champagne and then perform oral, anal and missionary sex on her. I know it was the heady 1970s and all – and he was under intoxicating environs house-sitting for Jack Nicholson – but that shouldn’t give you license to date rape a child.