Roman Polanski had to have made a deal with the devil to get out of the mess he was almost caught up in. Back in 1977 he was engaged in a photo shoot in friend Jack Nicholson’s house with a 13-year old girl named Samantha Gailey. He and the young girl were supposedly doing nothing wrong, and the only witness to anything was Anjelica Huston, who was at the time Nicholson’s girlfriend. She saw nothing untoward since Polanksi and Gailey were just coming out of a back room where the photo shoot had been going on. Gailey seemed dressed a bit provocatively but Huston, in support of Polanski, reported that she’d seen nothing to indicate that any assault had taken place.
All the same, Polanski was eventually charged with six counts of criminal behavior. He pleaded not guilty to all but one, the unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He was sent to prison for 42 days before he could issue a plea bargain, at which time he expected to be placed on probation with time served. What happened next however is still something that people tend to debate and talk about since it was so controversial that neither side came off looking too good. Polanksi did plead guilty to having sex with a minor, which was horrible enough and should have earned him a severe beat down in prison if anyone had found out. But the judge overseeing his case did something that was entirely unethical, not to mention foolish.
Judge Rittenband obviously did not care for child molesters, as many people do not, but the problem is that he agreed to Polanski’s plea deal. As abhorrent as it might have seemed to him, changing his mind and deciding to send Polanski away for 50 years was a huge red flag in regards to his integrity. In matters of the law and how justice is dispensed judges are supposed to be of the highest moral caliber. A plea deal should not be subject to the judge changing their mind on a whim, and in this case it was a mistake for Rittenband to even bother saying anything about it. Somehow word got through to Polanski about what was going to happen and he had no other recourse but to flee the country and go abroad to France, where he has been ever since.
The judge made a huge slip in judgment and sacrificed his ethical views in an attempt to make something right that no one even knew was wrong to begin with. The admission of guilt by Polanski in the molestation of Gailey was something that couldn’t be undone, as he plead guilty and therefore had condemned himself to whatever judgment awaited. But the judge had a moral obligation to think things through regarding the evidence and the matter at hand. Changing his mind midstream was not a good idea.
As of now prosecutors won’t even touch the case since it’s so old, and thus Polanski can’t possibly be touched for that particular matter.
Follow Us
