Rabid wrote:Please, do not confuse those two cases. In the case of Roman Polanski, you have to understand that in France you cannot be put on trial for Crimes (rape, murder, etc...) that were committed more than 20 years ago.
Being “put on trial” is irrelevant in the case of Polanski. The trial
already happened. Should he ever set foot in the US again (voluntarily or not) there will be no trial. He will be taken to the State of California to
serve out his sentence.
You see, while there is a statute of limitations on most crimes in the US (though not on murder) there is NOTHING that says “if you escape jail for X numbers of years you're free”. It doesn't work that way here.
THIS was the cause of the "outrage" of some of my fellow citizens : not merely the fact that he was (illegally) taken away to be judged for his crime (in a country that doesn't have extradition treaties signed with the US - Switzerland in this case, if my memory serves me right), but that it was done more than twenty years after the fact, even when the VICTIM told the JUGE that it was unnecessary, that the case should be "dropped".
His victim may have forgiven him, but the State of California has not. The only way to get out of his sentence (other than avoiding the US for the rest of his life, which might be a condition he finds perfectly agreeable) is to have the governor of California either pardon him or commute his sentence. There is no other mechanism. (Well, OK, the President of the US could probably do that, too, but that sort of thing is normally left to governors)
THIS, and nothing else, was the cause of the outrage (the circumstances of the arrest and the Judge going against the will of the victim).
The “will of the victim” has what exactly to do with this? Trial was
Polanski vs. the State of California, not some other collection of parties. We don't allow vindictive victims to torture perpatrators, nor do we allow generous ones to issue legal pardons.
Rabid wrote:About Roman Polanski :
- He didn't commit any crime in France.
- France or Switzerland don't have extradition treaties with the US, as far as I know.
- For better or for worse, France's or Switzerland's Justice system didn't agree to hand him over to the Americans.
- Which mean that he was illegally abducted
==> This is why people were outraged.
I wish to emphasize that I in no way condone illegal abduction. I fully concur that he has committed no crime in France and thus France is under no obligation to detain him, much less hand him over. It would be blatantly illegal for someone to go to France and abduct M. Polanski. Even if France (or anyone else) happened to have him in custody for whatever reason, they are still under no obligation to extradite him to California (and properly speaking, it's to
California he should be extradited, not the US Federal government which has no jurisdiction over rape).
However, California (probably with the Feds speaking on their behalf) has every right to
ask that he be turned over, seeing as he is a convicted felon. France has every right to refuse. The United States then have a right to decide that, should another French citizen break the law here they won't grant bail because they don't want to run the risk of said person escaping justice where the crime occurred. Everyone is within their rights to do all of the above – but every action (or inaction) has
consequences. A possible consequence of choosing to ignore an extradition request is that other people are denied bail in the future. There is no violation of law there, just two not-quite-the-same legal systems rubbing up against each other.
We are talking about Law and Justice, here - so the "will of the victim's family" has nothing to do with it, all the more so when the victim herself, I repeat, said that this arrest was unnecessary, and that she didn't care anymore about the guy.
It is out of the hands of the victim. It's the State of California that he requires forgiveness from at this point, not his victim. That is how the
law works in California.
He has been ACCUSED of having raped someone, possibly with additional violence. He has NOT YET been found guilty of it.
Thus, from the French point of view, he has still to be treated by the medias as innocent. This mean, between other things, that he shouldn't be shown handcuffed or restrained.
Getting handcuffed by the police in the US is clearly not the Big Deal it is in Europe, then. If you at an altercation in the US a typical tactic by the police is to cuff
everyone and sort out the guilty from the innocent later. LOTS of people have been cuffed in the US who were later uncuffed without even being charged with anything, and you'll never get any judge to rule that abuse
because it's not seen as something to get that upset about. Do you get that?
It's not seen the same way. It's not good, but from what I've gathered it's seen as a LOT more humiliating in the Europe than in the US. From the America viewpoint it looks like people getting upset over very little indeed.
The US will be very careful to describe him with words like “alleged” and “accused”, but frankly watching the wording is seen as
much more important here than the visuals. Let me put it this way – if DSK wanted to sue someone over the perceived humiliation of being handcuffed no US judge would do anything but laugh the case out of court. If, however, a media outlet did
not carefully put “alleged” or “accused” in front of the word “rape” he
could sue, likely successfully, for a great deal of money.
This is what I mean by a culture clash – in France, there is a great deal of concern over the visuals. In the US, there is a great deal of concern over how he described verbally. The two nations have different priorities in regards to how “presumed innocent” is portrayed, and that's where the problem comes in.
Hell, even someone being shown guilty would be protected : we have already evolved far beyond the point of publicly lynching people here, you know ?
In the US, being pictured in handcuffs is so far away from an actual lynching that comparing the two would be laughable.
As
everybody else, he has by the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the US has signed and agreed to follow as a founder of the United Nations, the inalienable right to be offered a fair trial (Articles 7, 10 and 11-1).
In the US, having your picture taken while you're in handcuffs is not seen as inherently interferring with a fair trial. If the defendant/lawyers feel that, in a particular case, such a photo
did poison the jury pool then they can petition for a change of venue or request a bench trial, without a jury and just a judge. You have a
right to a jury trial, you are not
compelled to have one. If you think a judge sans jury will give you a better deal you can ask for that.
Zed wrote:[R_H] wrote:If he were to be photographed with a coat over his hands, under which, but not visible, were handcuffs, would you be OK with that?
It depends. Will the coat have the same stigma of crime and guilt associated with it?
Actually, in the US, attempting to hide the cuffs might be interpreted as guilty shame and call more attention to them than otherwise. Really, a confident walk with head held high, portraying the innocent man unjustly accused (a movie/story meme here in the US) might work more in his favor than anything else – though admittedly that can be quite hard to pull off with confidence.
Seriously, the American public will notice an attempt to conceal handcuffs far more than they will notice the cuffs themselves.
Now, if, say, some US financial big shot was accused of rape in France then, naturally, French law and custom would apply. Displaying a photo of such a man in handcuffs would be illegal and should be dealt with under French law. Thing is, DSK was arrested in the US, where US law and custom apply. The media will carefully avoid describing him as guilty, but sorry, photos are allowed.
ETA: I was not aware there was an international arrest warrant for Polanski - that does change the situation from what I described above.
