Director Roman Polanski was arrested last weekend in Switzerland on an outstanding warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson's Los Angeles mansion in 1977. Polanski fled to France, where he held citizenship, on the eve of his sentencing. The French would like the world to share their misguided belief that this is a case about varying sexual mores and old grudges held by American law enforcement officials.

To many on the Continent, the arrest reveals Americans' peculiar obsession with punishment and even our cruelty, given Polanski's tragic history. He escaped the Holocaust as a child, and, in 1969, members of the Manson Family murdered his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate.

Frédéric Mitterrand, the French culture minister, told reporters that he was "dumbfounded" at Polanski's capture and that he "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them." He added, "Just as there is an America which is generous and which we like, so there is an America which is frightening, and that is the America which has just revealed its face."

Polanski's lawyer, Herve Temine, captured the mood of many in the country when he told the French newspaper Le Figaro, "Humanly, it seems to me unbearable that, more than 30 years after the incident, a man of 76 who obviously poses no danger to society, and whose artistic and personal reputation are clearly established, should spend a single day in prison."

Whither égalité?

In the many years since his escape, Polanski has earned millions of dollars from his films, acquired luxurious homes in Paris and the Swiss resort Gstaad, and enjoyed frequent international celebration of his cinematic prowess. His collection of accolades - including a 2002 Oscar that he accepted via satellite - was set to grow again with a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival this week.

For all the debate over whether someone once indicted for rape, sodomy, and providing a controlled substance to a seventh grader should be honored to such a degree, there is little question that Polanski's elevated position has allowed him to live above the law. He has avoided going to prison for more than three decades because he is rich, powerful, and artistically gifted. In the Western tradition we share with France, that should be unconscionable.

Process for all

Built into that process are many mechanisms designed to take into consideration the very situational concerns that Minister Mitterrand and others so vociferously assert are being left by the wayside. Our judicial system accounts for mitigating factors at sentencing. Our governors and president are provided with the power of the pardon. And those who allege prosecutorial misconduct, as Polanski has, are given access to various modes of appeal.

Polanski is one of the most talented directors of our time; if you have any doubt about that, I advise watching Chinatown again. And it is true that, had Polanski been sent to prison, he might never have gone on to direct The Pianist, a film of the highest quality and significant cultural resonance.

But a world that allows guilty men to go free based on their wealth or station is a world where the freedom to make great art is endangered. As the penultimate article of the French Declaration reminds us, "A society in which the observance of the law is not assured ... has no constitution at all."