@ rufnek
You say you don't give a **** and yet here you are spreading around a bunch of misinformation and somehow trying to give out a sermon on the law? I don't buy it.
You say you don't give a **** and yet here you are spreading around a bunch of misinformation and somehow trying to give out a sermon on the law? I don't buy it.
If I'm wrong on the points of law I quoted, please feel free to do your own search of the law books and refute my mistakes point by point. It's been a long time since I covered felons in Texas courts. Maybe the law has changed or is different in the Kingdom of California.
Let’s see, I said:
“It's never about the victim; it's about the violation of law. Polanski admitted he violated the law, but then ran rather than have sentence executed. Had he stayed for sentencing and served his time, it would be all over by now. How tough would the California court system be on a famous movie director? Look at subsequent treatment of stars in the California justice system. The case has been prolonged only because Polanski ran. He did the crime. He admitted to the crime. He fled from the crime. It's his own fault.”
I also said:
“In a criminal case, the victim doesn't have a choice about testifying if the prosecution wants to put her on the stand and the judge doesn't rule against it for some unusual reason. The prosecution has the right to call the victim as a witness and, if the witness is uncooperative, treat her as an unfriendly witness. She can purposely be a lousy witness, but she still has to answer the prosecutor's questions, and if the witness says something contrary to the sworn statements she gave earlier, the prosecution has the option to charge her with perjury. The law is not something a private citizen--not even the victim--can turn on or off like a faucet. If you report a crime and the police take your statement and begin an investigation and the DA's office files charges, then the case takes on a life of its own. You come back later and say, 'I didn't mean it, I was only kidding' and you open yourself to criminal charges of filing false reports and perjury. I know of one case where a guy went to jail because as a lark he identified a buddy as a suspect being sought by police. Just playing a joke on a friend, but he was jailed for knowingly filing a false report.”
In another post, I said:
“The thing about the law is that the defendent doesn't get to decide if the sentence is right or not, or fair or not or whether he should do time or not. If he failed to show up for sentencing or failed to surrender himself after being sentenced, then he did indeed run from the law. Period. Your statement "It wasn't until the very end of the case when he and his attorney realized that he was going to be 'made an example'" sounds to me that they were anticipating a sentence rather than reacting to one. But one cannot claim a sentence is unfair until the sentence is given. Even then, a good attorney could have gotten him out on bail while the sentence was being appealed. If it were an illegal or cruel or unusual sentence or if Polanski did not get a fair trial, then a higher court could set it aside. As it was, Polanski did not exhaust his legal options; he just grabbed an outbound flight to escape justice. I've yet to hear that any attorney has appealed on the grounds that he was not fairly tried or received a cruel or unusual sentence. He simply decided on his own not to serve time and ran.”
“Besides, I question just how 'unfair' the original court was or how determined it was to 'make an example' of Polanski if the judge didn't even order him to surrender his passport while out on bail. Or did Polanski obtain a fake passport to make his escape? Certainly he should not have done anything to elude justice on the advice of his attorney as that would open his attorney to disbarment and criminal charges.”
Sorry, I don't see that as saying anything other than Polanski should have given the legal system a chance to play itself out rather than skipping bail and escaping to Europe.
Last edited by rufnek; 09-27-09 at 08:23 PM.