Crime & Punishment & Roman Polanski

I don’t really have a conclusion or plan with this blog, it kind of goes all over the place. Its not really formatted to prove a point or achieve anything. Its more of a streaming of my thought process, so please just bare with it.


So the story of Roman Polanski getting arrested after 30 years of hiding is absolutely amazing. He has been living in Switzerland and France during that time to avoid extradition to the US. Polanski fled the country to keep from serving prison time over his guilty plea of the rape of a 13 year old girl 1977.

Oh and not just rape, but providing alcohol for the reason of intoxicating a minor. Drugging a minor with Quaaludes. And forced oral sex and sodomy on a minor.

But hey, Chinatown was a pretty badass great movie.

That aside should Roman Polanski still be arrested after all these years?

My answer is Yes. But...

But this case is really tricky. In the original trial he plead guilty to one of the 6 or so charges he was up against and did 42 days in jail under the impression given by the judge and bargained by his lawyer that the 42 days would be the only incarcerated time he would have to serve, but only to have the judge in the case renege on the plea bargain that was agreed on and was going to send him to prison for much longer and then be deported from the United States.

Investigations into whether or not there has been legitimate mismanagement of the case by the judge was investigated and it was determined to be highly likely that the judge was not handling the case correctly and there was behind-the-scenes-manipulation that was effecting the trail.

The sad truth of our world is that the more we strive for justice to be served the more complicated things become.

Coming from me this is going to sound odd, but this is the real beauty of Religion snd God. They provide the feeling of ultimate justice. Regardless of how well or not our system works you can sleep at night knowing that the guilty will rot in Hell someday.

It must be nice to think that, or be able to suspend your sense of disbelief to think this would be true. But when you think about it, is that ever really enough. Does anyone ever really take comfort from knowing (or believing) that the person who killed their child, or robbed them on the street is going to Hell is going to make them feel better.

Hell is supposed to be the pinnacle of punishment. Nothing can be more Punishing then burning in Hell. If someone is going to Hell can you really ask for anything more?

There is no real sense of justice being served with thinking someone is going to Hell. You know why?

1. We can’t see this justice in action to verify that the punishment is being served.

2, I’m guessing because deep down people really don’t believe it. If we really, really believed this wouldn’t knowing they would spend an eternity in Hell be good enough?

With that train of thought maybe we should just let the person be free. Hey so what if they live another 30-40 years. They will spend literally, literally a Fucking Eternity in Hell!

Eternity vs. 40 years is nothing. Its not a god damn thing. Not even a blip on the radar of time.

What’s Polanski got? He’s 79, he’s looking at 10-20 years at the most. Surely a child rapist would go to Hell.

But what if say someone committed a horrible crime when they where 20 but then devoted the next 80 years saving peoples lives and doing whatever’s humanly possibly to benefit society in a way that out weighs their previous crime? Is there a scale for this?

This is a hypothetical setup to a story I’m working on. It turns out Superman (Or Superman like character so I don‘t get sued) is into having sex with underage girls. On of those things where pretty much agreeing is wrong. But it is Superman, he has saved countless lives on top of the planet and galaxy. This is what Superman has done for us. Should he be held accountable for the crime(s)?

Well if we know that Superman will go to Hell then it should be okay. But should he go to Hell? Hasn’t he countered the going-to-Hell crimes a thousand times over?

This is why we try to prosecute people as fast as our system (or different countries systems) can allow. So they can pay for the crime quickly and go back into society hopefully reformed.

So I think we defiantly need to prosecute Roman Polanski, but my problem is at what cost has it been?

30 years of time and money used to find ways to get him. Where their better criminals that we could’ve caught with that effort?

Roman Polanski paid the victim a ton of money in a settlement (Mutually agreed amount on both parties). he served some court ordered jail time. He left the country (which was going to be part of his sentence anyway), and the victim has publicly come out to say she has forgiven him and feels he should be acquitted of all charges

Well, what more do we need? Well we want him to go to Hell.

The reality is there is no Hell, there is no supreme punishment, and we can’t really get a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in knowing justice was served.

We live in world that’s complicated and filled with nothing but grey area. It’s an incredibly complicated form of order that has made our legal system that’s been able grow and continually expanding for as long as our species has tried to manage a culture.

In realty there is no order. Everything is a figment of others imaginations being forced onto ours to give the illusion that there is order.

There is no real justice, there is no clear right or wrong. There is never ever a one-sided story.

And there is no fair way to determine and judge something as being a Punishment-Fitting-the Crime.

And most of all at the end of the day there is no Hell for someone to rot in.

Now, no one ever says what I’m saying. And I don’t have any real ideas or solutions to this. But if smart intellectual people with truth and love as their primary goals got together and started to discus this issue with the intention of starting fresh creating a true fairer organized system to prosecute and punish people for crimes then maybe we can have a relatively legitimate system of order.

This will never really happen though. Mostly because our world doesn’t create people who have all those qualities: Intelligence, Truth & Love in their heart, and ability to create awareness and discuss how to solve problems for the world good, and the ability to make it happen.

We don’t have these peoples.

Yep folks, I’m going to say it, “This is the best we can do“.

What we have is varying gradients of people with those qualities but no one is all of these. As a species we have too much self interest. We have our own motivations, and agendas. We all have other people trying to pull the our strings for their interests.

So guess what. This is the best system we have. If we sat down with the smartest people we would probably end up having a very similar system with few differences. This is as best as we can do.

So yes I think our system is weak but its what we have, and according to it Roman Polanski should still be punished. And if for no other reason then serving the publics illusion that justice really can be served.

Hey we all need warm-fuzzies no and then.

Maybe we should look at our need for justice stemming from our past perspectives about Religion. Religion created the idea that if your God or Gods will punish you for bad acts. But we grew as a species and found somewhat less use for God in our reality, but much of our cultural beliefs stemming from religion have stuck with us. A big one being our feelings on crime and punishment.

Shouldn’t we at least try to look at this without any religiously derived perspective? It might be worth a shot, how could it hurt?

And remember, when you think about god, religion, right vs. wrong, and our criminal justice system just think about this.  This guy here, you know Charles manson.  Has never killed anyone (that we know of) in his life.  The only reason he is still alive is due to the state of California deciding against the use of the death penalty.

Was this a nice guy?  No.

Was he a horrible person?  Yes

Am I condoning his actions?  NO!

But the next time you think about the law or follow a trial, think about Roman Polanski and Charles Manson.  Then open your mind to other ways of looking at things.  Think outside the box and question why we think the way we think about things.

Don't be scared, thinking outside the box is what gets things done.