Woody Allen defends Roman Polanski.

"It's something that happened many years ago... he has suffered.... He has paid his due," Allen told French radio station RTL.

"He's an artist, he's a nice person, he did something wrong and he paid for it. They (his critics) are not happy unless he pays the rest of his life. They would be happy if they could execute him in a firing squad," he said.
"Enough is enough," he added.

"It's something that happened many years ago."

So did the murder of Holly Maddux. Should we have let Ira Einhorn stay put in Europe too?

"He (Polanski) has suffered..."

How? By fleeing America and living the good life in France?

"He has paid his due..."

By spending 45 days in a diagnostic prison center?

"He's an artist."

So what? That permits him to drug and rape a 13-year-old girl?

"He's a nice person..."

Nice people don't drug and rape 13-year-old girls. Or "take advantage" of 16-year-old girls either.

"He did something wrong and he paid for it."

Yes, he did something wrong. No, he didn't pay for it. He fled the United States so he wouldn't have to pay for it.

"They (his critics) will not be happy... (blah blah blah.)"

No one wants to put Mr. Polanski in front of a firing squad. His "critics" simply want him to be extradicted back to where he committed his crime to serve whatever reasonable prison sentence a California judge deems to impose.

Mr. Allen who wooed and eventually married the adopted teenage daughter of his girlfriend Mia Farrow, may feel a special kinship with Mr. Polanski when it comes to his attraction to young girls. He seems to feel that his status as an "artist" should preclude normal standards of decent behavior from being imposed on him.

He is free to think so.

And "we" are free to think that a man who admits to having illegal sexual intercouse with a minor and flees our criminal justice system should be punished for it.