Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the American justice system is American culture itself.
After all, it’s doubtful that the writers of the 222-year-old Constitution had any idea of the future judicial leniency often granted to a pop culture swollen with household names – people who, despite the lack of valid importance ascribed to them by anything more than brand-recognition, behave as though they are above the law, failing to use what little wit may have been bestowed upon them to understand the damage they cause to an ailing justice system. It’s also unlikely that any legislator over the past two centuries cared one way or the other if the person violating the statute was a celebrity or a hermit; corrupt as our politics are, the time has not yet come to encourage the conspiracy theorists. When it comes to crime, America has been mostly made up of legislators who are dedicated to passing criminal statutes in favor of justice and human rights for all people. There is no special treatment in law-writing.
The problem comes long after legislation, and often long after laws have been enforced as prescribed by the statutes. Nobody cares, for example, if Mr. Smith next door gets dragged away by police on charges of child molestation. In fact, the neighbors will probably fuel the media with cliched (and probably unfounded) character statements – “I knew there was something off about him,” or “I once saw him kill a mosquito and I knew then that there was a deep cruelty in that man’s soul.”
Case-in-point: the homicide of Annie Le. Within days of arresting suspect Raymond Clark, CNN’s disgraceful current affairs personality, Nancy Grace, found herself a sleazy character witness to assist her in viciously slandering a potentially innocent man on television, unfairly biasing the public, and worse, making it very difficult for Clark to get a fair trial. Never mind that the New Haven Police Chief hadn’t released any details about the evidence they’ve found. Never mind that the news media didn’t actually have a shred of admissible evidence implicating Clark in Le’s murder. As far as the people were concerned, the man was a killer, and even if Clark is innocent he’s going to have a time of it trying to convey that message to the public after all of this bad publicity, especially when low-lifes like Grace can’t even be held for slander if a jury should find him not guilty.
But while media lynch mobs effectively destroy the due process of the Constitution – the ironic postmodern effect of the First Amendment trumping the significantly more important Fifth Amendment – there is one redeeming factor here: even with a crippled due process, the justice system is still allowed to do its job. No one sends a petition to his local judge asking for the immediate hanging of a murder suspect, and most judges and juries don’t let media frenzies and public opinion distract them from the facts of the case or the conditions of the law.
The larger problem comes from the opposite case, when a person has enough evidence against him to warrant a trial and suddenly the powerful world of culture baselessly interjects the man’s innocence, stalling the justice system with foolish petitions supporting the man’s release. I am, of course, referring to the Roman Polanski case: he has already confessed and pleaded his guilt to a savage and all-but-unforgivable crime and then gone on to commit another, but Hollywood big-shots like Harvey Weinstein, Pedro Almodovar, and Monica Bellucci have shamefully either denounced his detainment or even gone so far as to call for his release, demonstrating complete ignorance of what the justice system is or how it works. (Incidentally, if Monica Bellucci is going to tell the courts how to carry out justice, then someone from the courts should write her a letter telling her how to act.)
So what is the difference between the case of Raymond Clark, a man who has not yet been found guilty but may as well have been in the public eye, and Roman Polanski, a man who, after confessing his guilt, ran away from the consequences of the law only to be greeted warmly with calls for pardon three decades later?
Some might argue that the only real difference is the amount of time that has elapsed. After all, Polanski’s crime was committed over thirty years ago, and while time may not heal all wounds, Polanski’s victim suggests that it may be enough of a band-aid to forget about them, so long as no one comes along and rips the thing off.
But the Polanski case, with all due respect, isn’t about his victim – and to some extent, it isn’t even about his first crime; it’s about his second crime, which invalidates the time-elapsed argument. He made a plea deal with the courts – in layman’s terms, he agreed to confess his guilt in exchange for a lesser punishment. But Polanski wasn’t punished at all. He fled the country before the United States handed down a sentence, and then apparently dodged US capture through significant understanding of loopholes in international extradition and detainment laws – two slaps in the face of any justice system.
Now that he’s been captured, the US requires that he be held accountable for using the plea deal as a way to skip town. The thirty-year-old sex crime is, frankly, something of a moot point; Polanski now has another statutory violation to answer for and anyone who calls for his release over the indictment on rape is failing to recognize that he now must be indicted for evading his sentence. He is a fugitive of American justice on two counts, regardless how many notable films he’s produced in the process.
Others argue that Polanski has done wonderful things in the artistic world over the last three decades. While this may be true in the eyes of some, others would argue that Polanski’s work is nothing special, that he simply has a good track record of completing the task to which he’s been set, and some might even say that his work is not at all compelling. No matter the viewpoint, this essentially breaks down to an assessment of Polanski’s employment record. And what does a man’s employment record have to do with justice? Raymond Clark is said to have had an excellent employment record, but that hasn’t stopped the media from tearing him apart like a lamb in a lion’s den. Again, Polanski supporters have no basis in justice (though neither do those who like to smear Clark).
And that is the part that is more concerning than anything else. Raymond Clark may very well be guilty, but ultimately, it will be up to a court to seek out truth and then carry out justice, whatever that may be. He doesn’t have a team of celebrity buddies vying to have the system let him get away with a horrific crime.
The debate over Roman Polanski, however, has already demonstrated how justice is lacking not so much in the criminal system (unless they let him off the hook), but in society. The call for Polanski’s pardon indicates that popular culture – sadly, the most influential role model America seems to have – not only misunderstands the situation, but misunderstands the law. The justice system is not some spoiled child insistent on holding a grudge that should have long since passed. It is the system that has been implemented to protect the public and to remind us that legislation is a serious thing and violators cannot simply be pardoned because they managed to dodge the authorities for a significant period of time, making a few movies along the way. If such were the case, we might all commit heinous acts and jump the border for a few years.
Roman Polanski is undoubtedly guilty of two crimes, one of which he admitted to and another which requires no forward admission – even a monkey might recognize the cowardly act of leaving the United States to avoid punishment. Not only does the United States have a judicial and Constitutional duty to hold him accountable for his deeds (over which, by the way, he’s shown no remorse), but all of the would-be Mother Teresas of Hollywood – and anyone else who scribbles his name on a petition – need to think about the actual facts and details of Polanski’s offenses and, more importantly, about society as a whole. No matter how much money a man has, no matter how influential an artist he is, and no matter how well the world recognizes him as a celebrity, he must be held accountable for his actions, good or bad.
Having powerful friends isn’t bad, as long as those friends use their power responsibly. In the meantime, we need to stop preventing the American justice system from doing its job, especially if we intend to complain about its ineffectiveness later.