Medieval,
You can abuse anyone you want in this room, someone's mother if you feel like it. Certainly, I can pose a hypothetical about your daughter, although I do not know her and meant no offence. I just wished to see if you could see things not so black and white. Apparently, you cannot. That is a shame but your choice in the end. But tell me to never speak about your daughter again you cannot do. You raised the issue of your daughter. I did not. You kept using her as a reason why you are so sure of Polanski’s guilt and why you can come up with some much more creative punishments that he obviously deserve. So tough, live with it or do not argue in 1408.
I am not defending Polanski. I don't know the man or if he is a pervert or a victim of circumstances. I am defending the law and the US constitution. I like to do that occasionally. The time it needs defending the most is when really don't want to do it. The rights of the KKK to march down a street or Communists to be communists and sprout the dogma that not even the Russian's believe anymore. They are the principals that the US founding fathers protected. Not just the nice and the pleasant.
It is also the reason you can write your stories on this site, Dom. Without those protections and the defence of such “perverts” as the publisher of Hustler and the makers of porn, you would now be in jail for writing obscenity against the community standards of some small Southern bible belt town where a 13 year old daughter of someone, said she was 18 and managed to get on this site and read your stories. The father of THAT 13 year old daughter believes you are a pervert and regardless of the constitution, you should rot in jail.
And one of the things that the US founding fathers did was to protect the not very nice, the disliked in the community, from undue processes. They attempted to create rights that said you had to be found guilty in a properly constituted court where the law was fairly applied, where the rights of individuals were not abused in seeking that justice.
But the administration of justice is not fair. Publicity tries and convicts people before they get anywhere near a court. Their reputations are used to "prove" that they are guilty. There is a very famous trial in England where pirates or privateers were being tried for the rape of a girl they actually went out of their way to protect. The trial was political and had nothing to do with the administration of justice at all. They were found guilty and sentenced to death. One of the pirates decried: "But we are innocent of this crime. We sought to do good and we are condemned for it." The captain of their ship turned to the man and said: "You did despicable things in your life. And for none of these have you been tried. Hang for one of those instead if you wish."
I would certainly have defended those in the US accused of being communists and either forced to name names or lose their livelihoods. The US does not have a history of treating citizens well at all in the face of hysteria. Just ask the sons and daughters of those of Japanase extraction about how fair it was to deprive their parents of liberty for years, take away their houses, their property because obviously those of Japanese extraction were not to be trusted whereas those of German extraction were obviously good US citizens and the could still keep their constitutional rights. At the time in both the cases of the communist with hunts and the Japanese internment, almost no one cared. It is when the law is being used blatantly against the spirit or wording of the constitution and the very basic rights of the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and "liberty" wasn't stuck in their as an afterthought. It was there to say that the right to go about one’s business and not be confined or restrained without just cause is fundamental to the creation of the nation, is THE most important right a nation must protect of its citizens.
In this case, those rights were taken away without just cause, without a trial, without adequate proof, and by the misuse of judicial power and improper conduct of the prosecution. At that point whether Polanski was innocent or as guilty as all hell, didn’t matter a damn.
Medieval, your attitude that the man is guilty because it is obvious that he did it and the constitution and legal rights should just be ignored because YOU know he is guilty is basically saying you have no respect for the Constitution and you believe the founding fathers of the US to be morons and wimps that didn’t understand that guilty people are sometimes so obviously guilty that all their rights should be stripped away.
I wrote at great length and I thought in a logical fashion to point out that a plea bargain in this case, did not even come close to suggesting guilt. All it suggested was the fear of 50 years in jail.
It is no difference at all to Van Morrison of the Doors who pleaded guilty in Florida to an offence that he clearly did not commit, and in that case there were literally hundreds of photographs that proved he was innocent. Yet the hysteria and the people that chose to believe he was evil, corrupting their children, and as a rock star had to be, like the pirate, if not guilty of what he was charged, guilty of much more heinous crimes. It meant he was staring at years in jail and the destruction of his music and the lives of many people that depended on him. It could be argued that that injustice led to his death.
So the US basically killed a man because, and yes “the US” because the public hysteria fanned by baying press, caused the US legal system to take punitive and inappropriate action against someone who was guilty of wishing to cause his audience to think for themselves. It meant that the trial, rather than being a case of the legal system taking on an alleged pervert, condemned the whole nation for allowing the removal of the rights of someone that the majority found obnoxious because he was counter establishment, he was corrupting the minds of their children, etc etc.
The Morrison trial is far easier to argue now because it did not involve the emotional issue of a young girl but it certainly did have all the other elements, including a plea bargain for a crime that the evidence just did not support, the conviction by the press, an extremely unpopular accused in the eyes of the conservative majority of the population.
Therefore, I’m very happy you think that I’m flying in the face of “convention and conviction” because neither of these are good enough to deprive anyone of their liberty. Polanski may be a dislikeable man. He certainly isn’t diplomatic. His comments as quoted would annoy pretty much anyone. But they don’t prove anything, other than he may have been extremely angry that his rights had been so thoroughly abused and that his life turned upside down without any legal proof that he did anything, just an uncorroborated accusation by a young woman, who stood to gain financially by the accusation, had a reputation to defend (she quite wrongly assumed that her personal details would stay sealed and not be revealed). Even her evidence, taking on its face without any assumptions that she had reasons to lie, has serious issues that would have needed to have been addressed, had a trial ever occurred.
But none of this seems to matter, the man is reprehensible and obviously guilty because he copped to a plea bargain and then had the hide to flee the land of the free and the just, thumbing his nose at the US, his homeland for very many years. Apparently, the evidence that I took some time to look at was me making stuff up on the spur of the moment.
I am so grateful that you decided in the end to argue this issue on the basis of your ability to just know that someone is guilty and that, all the facts, notwithstanding no one faced in a similar position except a guilty pervert would either plead guilty or flee the country when a structured and offered deal was turned against you to allow you to go to jail for years for a crime that the prosecution had no evidence to prove against you, only the court of public opinion and the press hysteria. And obviously, that was how it should be.
We can’t have perverts go free, even if the law doesn’t allow for a conviction. Stuff the constitution and the founding fathers. Obviously, you have the right to carry guns to the President’s address to citizens because the Second Amendment says you have the freedom to bear arms, but when you “know” a pervert is guilty and an “innocent” girl accuses him of such, that is just good enough for you. Hang the bastard or impale him on a red hot poker. In that case, the Constitution no longer matters. The founding fathers must have got that bit wrong. They weren’t thinking of perverts or slimy foreigners that would accept a plea bargain when the alternative was to risk 50 years in prison and then not even wish to remain in a country to face the music when they got their just deserts and were told they were going to jail for years without the little bothersome matter of a trial or any legal proof of their guilt.
The constitution should have read, “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all but those that obviously are guilty of crimes even if the evidence isn’t there because they are creeps and perverts and if enough good sound citizens believe them to be, then throw their asses in jail”. I applaud your public mindedness and standing up to show just how wrong the founding fathers of the US were. It obviously needed to be done because we simply cannot have perverts getting away with such reprehensible acts just because there was the pesky matter of a lack of evidence, now can we? And obviously a 13 year old girl would never lie and so that the law should be changed to make it that when faced with the testimony of such a girl, there is no need for anything else, not even a jury. The judge must then decide just how many years the pervert deserves to rot in jail.