“Celeb. arrested for marijuana possession, sentenced to 8 years in prison” would have a larger impact on marijuana possession than “Celeb. arrested for marijuana possession, sentenced to 4 hours community service.” Especially when, among the non-rich and famous, 8 years in prison is more common than 4 hours community service.

No, a little community service and/or rehab is pretty typical for possession these days. Where it gets tricky is when the prosecutor charges “intent to sell” based solely on the quantity exceeding a rather low limit, never mind that one can smoke up that and more and still be more sober than Ted Kennedy was on an average day. I haven’t heard of that happening to a celebrity. Probably they have “people” to buy and hold amounts large enough for the party for them…

Laura(southernxyl):
Is that what a settlement implies?Well I’ll be darned.

I was merely implying she has no standing when it comes to requesting the charges to be dropped as she made a settlement out of court. In my view what she said was, I will not press charges for the rape provided you pay me for the assault. That being, yo

Vader: Allah Pundit nailed it:

Laura(southernxyl):
Is that what a settlement implies?Well I’ll be darned.

My view is that she threw out her standing when she accepted the money. So she has no basis for asking the charges be dropped because she accepted money from the perp. Regardless, this isn’t about her anymore, it is about the rule of law and one person using their fame and money to avoid paying the penalty for violating the law.

“What makes this even more appealing for white people is that you can raise “awareness” through expensive dinners, parties, marathons, selling t-shirts, fashion shows, concerts, eating at restaurants and bracelets. In other words, white people just have to keep doing stuff they like, EXCEPT now they can feel better about making a difference.”

Fedya: If you’re a celebrity who’s unpopular with the chattering classes (eg. Martha Stewart), you’ll get the book thrown at you.

Please. This article predicted that, based on sentencing guidelines, Martha Stewart would get a sentence between 37 and 46 months in prison. Instead, she got 5 months in a minimum security federal prison (the best possible assignment she could have hoped for) and another 5 months of home confinement. This was apparently the minimum sentence that could be imposed by the sentencing guidelines.

Something like tolerance for executing the innocent, or bullying children into acknowledging a god in a national pledge of allegiance.

As I mentioned before, a sentence of two weeks less than the maximum strikes me as appropriate for Polanski.

Can a new judge act as if the plea bargain was still on the table? If the plea bargain is not in effect is not the guilty plea as well? Is an entire trial 32 years after the crime required before Polanski receives any jail time for the underlying crime (ignoring the flight- associated charges).

egd: On the issue of deterrence, I don’t understand (from a deterrence/judicial philosophy perspective) why celebrities get lighter sentences for similar charges than non-celebrities.

If you’re a celebrity who’s unpopular with the chattering classes (eg. Martha Stewart), you’ll get the book thrown at you.

bellisaurius: Does polanski get charged by the laws of the time, or current laws, if different sentences and conditions exist (I’m assuming they’re worse, like with offender registration and whatnot), or does ex post facto come into play?

I’m not sure what the law says, but my sense of justice says that since Polanski had the option to be sentenced back then and declined, he has no right to object if today’s guidelines are used instead.

Gordon Langston:
I guess their fear/hatred of conservatives is rational…

Conservatives started it with their fear/hatred of “deviants”.

Too true. and true for Wall Street, and the Potomac River. Basically, most places, really.

Oh sure, Hollywood has a strange moral compass. But then, so does most institutions, religious ones included. If you are looking for a real moral compass, devise your own and follow it. It will likely be better than 99% of the other self-proclaimed compasses out there.

Oren: For all Hollywood’s failures, at least they were out ahead of the rest of the nation on our irrational hatred/fear of homosexuality.
FWIW, I think the Polanski thing revolves around the fact that HW is a small place and that animus from the wrong people can quickly turn into career death. It’s absolutely shameful.

I guess their fear/hatred of conservatives is rational…

Again, this kind of arrogance should come as no surprise to anyone. Hollywood libs are just louder and more rich than your standard lib. They ALL believe that they’re better than YOU.

Irony impairment strikes again.

But being a good liberal legislator does, apparently, earn a free pass for one young woman left to drown while you go back to the party. An occasional attempted sexual assault is OK, too.

Regardless, there are a number of cross-cutting dynamics to the Polanski case, but it’s an interest barometer of society’s moral compass.

I did a post on that and Mark Geragos’ column on the motivations behind the arrest. Check it out:

http://chaosoutoforder.com/2009/09/29/polanski-the-litmus-test/

Heh. Speaking of parolees, I remember a murder case I once consulted on. A young woman’s body was found nude in a body of water. She had been the victim of a witnessed abduction. At autopsy, the young lady had been throttled and there was evidence of a fight, but there was no indication of actual sexual intercourse. It was hypothesized that the woman had resisted the rape and the attacker had killed her during her subdual. After her death, the attacker did not complete the rape.

The local police went to a local “sex offender support group” and rounded up the usual suspects. They had one guy in mind. He convinced them that he was likely not the assailant with the following argument. He had murdered women (apparently more than one — I didn’t see his complete history) in the past and committed various atrocities upon their bodies. He argued that it could *not* have been he who committed this most recent crime because, as the police well knew, had the women died during subdual that would not have diminished his ardor in the least. It would have excited rather than discouraged him, and he would not have hesitated to have sex with the corpse. Thus, he said, if the the attacker was put off by her death, it couldn’t be him. The police, after reflection, agreed, and he was released.

Gotta love those sexual predators.

To be fair, some people in Hollywood feel strongly about some things as a matter of morality, and they sacrifice a lot of time and money toward what they see as the right thing. Some of them donate a lot of money to charity, visit troops in war zones, visit children in hospitals, or otherwise genuinely try to do good things without the ulterior motive of drawing attention to themselves.

But to say that the industry as a whole has some sort of moral compass is just ludicrous. Hollywood is full of examples of what happens when people with no grounding or moral compass get enough money to act on their worst impulses. I’m waiting for the Tom Cruise press conference to announce that Polanski needs to be left alone, and his victim just needs Scientology.

pete:
There is also the issue of deterrence, both in deterring Polanski from finding new victims (which he has reportedly done) and from letting other potential rapists and parole jumpers know that the state will still come after them even if they run away for a long time. With the number of celebreties who have committed pretty serious crimes like this thinking that their money and power will always act as a get out of jail free card, that is actually a pretty important factor here considering the publicity of the case and social status of the rapist.

On the issue of deterrence, I don’t understand (from a deterrence/judicial philosophy perspective) why celebrities get lighter sentences for similar charges than non-celebrities. Since celebrities are high-profile individuals, shouldn’t they get the book thrown at them?

“Celeb. arrested for marijuana possession, sentenced to 8 years in prison” would have a larger impact on marijuana possession than “Celeb. arrested for marijuana possession, sentenced to 4 hours community service.” Especially when, among the non-rich and famous, 8 years in prison is more common than 4 hours community service.

Word on the street: Polanski’s next film is so good, Europe’s going to let him bang an eight-year-old. It’s THAT GOOD.

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!

The leader of NAMBLA says that he learned that America is “about the freedom to be whatever you want to be, be it black, gay, or a pedophile, and that pedophiles cannot choose to be attracted to boys, they’re born that way.” Kyle disgustedly rebuts this saying, “Dude. You have sex with children!” to which Stan adds, “Yeah, you know, we believe in equality for everybody, and tolerance, and all that gay stuff, but dude, fuck you!”

That’s true, but defenders of that position should make clear that they are interested in the rights of the State of California and Justice, not motivated out of compassion towards the victim.

There is also the issue of deterrence, both in deterring Polanski from finding new victims (which he has reportedly done) and from letting other potential rapists and parole jumpers know that the state will still come after them even if they run away for a long time. With the number of celebreties who have committed pretty serious crimes like this thinking that their money and power will always act as a get out of jail free card, that is actually a pretty important factor here considering the publicity of the case and social status of the rapist.

I have compassion for the victim in the case and fault Polanski for continuing to evade justice and drawing this out, but understand that we also should try to minimize future rapes and going after cases like this contributes to that goal. I also have compassion for the nameless other potential victims who have not yet been victimized, while the Weinsteines of the world do not seem to care about them as long as there is money to be made off of the rapists.