Child rapist goes free

Switzerland will not extradite the film director Roman Polanski to the United States to face sentencing for unlawful sex with a minor because of a possible fault in the American application for his extradition, Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told a news conference on Monday.
"He's a free man," Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf said.

Mr. Polanski was arrested in 2009 on an international warrant issued by the United States based on a 1977 conviction in California. The director fled on the eve of sentencing because he was afraid that the presiding judge intended to renege on what his defense lawyers said was a promise that Mr. Polanski would not have to go to prison.

Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf said the Swiss government had rejected the extradition request in part because American authorities declined to provide confidential testimony from a January 2010 hearing on Mr. Polanski's original sentencing agreement.

Swiss officials said that records from that hearing would have established whether the judge who tried the case in 1977 had assured Mr. Polanski that time he spent in a psychiatric unit would constitute the whole of the period of imprisonment he would serve.

"If this were the case, Roman Polanski would actually have already served his sentence and therefore both the proceedings on which the U.S. extradition request is founded and the request itself would have no foundation," the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement.

Run that by me again. A child rapist is going free because a judge may have changed his determination about sentencing? This sort of thing happens in America when new information comes to light or if the defendant doesn't show enough remorse for his actions. It is not unusual and besides, who are the Swiss to judge whether the application of our laws are fair or not? This was a hearing on extradition. What the Swiss judge is saying that Polanski had the right to flee - ridiculous on its face.

Perhaps his next victim will be a little Swiss girl. Wonder what the judge would say then about sentencing?