There are lots and lots of opinions - and every single one of them is only partially informed.

Thing is - if Roman Polanski wasn't Roman Polanski this would have been over and done decades ago. Seriously. The victim has been saying 'drop it' for decades. If it wasn't for the fact that the guy's famous, this would be the ultimate cold case. Yes, he might have been picked up if he'd gone back to the US but chasing all over the globe trying to get an arrest and extradition?

HOW much has been spent on this? A case which only the media cares about and which is only relevant because the guy is famous?

As to all the 'Hang the rapist pedophile crap' come on people. I've never heard of a serious pedophile who wasn't a repeat offender and if Polanski is, then it's been hidden amazingly well. Did he know the girl's age at the time? No one knows, although Anjelica Huston (who was present and not involved in the case) said "She certainly didn't strike me as an innocent 13 year old". She goes on to say that the girl could have been anywhere up to 25 and she is one of the few who saw her that night.

For those who say you can always tell - rubbish. When I was 19 I was modelling at a fashion show for charity (period costume stuff - I was wearing a 160 year old Tux that'd I'd bought for Civil War/Old West stuff) and chatting up this lovely girl who was around 5'6" tall, very lovely, and very well endowed. I was seriously interested in her until someone told me that she was only 13. But if I hadn't been told that I never would have guessed. I thought she was my own age. Some girls you can tell and some you cannot. Heck my wife gets mistaken for my daughter regularly and gets IDed for everything. If she's had her hair dyed (she has a very few strands of grey which is easily visible against her hair which is nearly black) she looks, literally, half her age. Most folks think she's 15-16 and she just turned 28.

All we have of the case's particulars is a Grand Jury indictment testimony - which isn't subject to cross examination and is pretty much whatever the prosecutor wants it to say unless the victim stands up to the courts. It is coached and not always true. Samantha Geiner has said it's true - but then she kind of has to at this point doesn't she? She's also stood up for Polanski and said that she'd stand in for him in court if the court would allow it to get this dismissed.

That's a pretty powerful statement of action as to what she thinks on the matter - and she's the victim in the case. Can't say as I've ever once heard of a rape victim being willing to do such a thing before.

I expect that the reality of this was that it was something that got started, got out of hand and then went bad. Had these been ordinary people it would have been a quick plea bargain, a slap on the wrist and a record which would have been ignored as long as nothing like it ever happened again.

But this was a media trial and because of that, there were reputations and careers to be made off of it. Justice was much further from anyone's mind then 'How can I benefit from all the press.'

We all know full well that even in non-media cases, trials and courts get stupid. What people are forgetting was that Polanski made a plea bargain, held up his (initial) end of it and then got wind that the courts were going to welch on him. What everyone is forgetting was that he took the plea bargain, among other things, to avoid a trial which he probably would have won. A celebrated director with buckets of cash against some little nobody? The entire thing would have been 'He said/she said' and they would have dragged the girl through the mud in the worst way. That's how rape trials were done in the '70s folks. That was the standard.

But he didn't do that. Quite probably he felt pretty bad about things. A mean person would have forced it to trial and he may well have taken the plea against the advice of his lawyer. We don't know as that info is priviledged.

The other thing to remember is this - under the laws in force at the time - at least if one article I read had it right - the judge could have tossed him in jail on that plea for 50 years. If they were going to welch and it became obvious I might well have left myself. Justice was far from being served there.

Court cases are, sadly, seldom about justice. The law books are full of innocent people being convicted because their lawyers sucked or because the juries were crap or the evidence was cooked or witnesses coerced. The legal system is far from perfect and it gets less perfect where fame is concerned.

Witness the case of a young black man who had entirely consensual oral sex with a classmate who then freaked out later and called rape. He was a football star and honor student and at last count has spent 10 years in jail for an act which isn't even illegal anymore with a girl within a year or two of his own age. What's crazier is that if they'd had intercourse, he'd never seen the inside of a jail cell but because they stopped at oral sex he's in prison as a pedophile for a consensual sex act with a peer.

The point is - the law on these matters is idiotic.

No one but two people know what REALLY happened that night. BOTH of them would like the courts to drop something that happened over 30 years ago and get on with their lives. The state gains nothing from this witch hunt and should have let the matter drop ages ago. It's an embarrassment.