The case surrounding the arrest of director Roman Polanski has both supporters and critics.

Jeffrey Toobin | BIO
AC360° Contributor
New Yorker

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF LAW about Roman Polanski. Writer describes Polanksi’s arrest in 1977 by Detective Philip Vannatter. Polanski was accused of raping Samantha Gailey, a thirteen-year-old girl. On August 8, 1977, pursuant to a plea bargain, Polanski pleaded guilty to the least serious of the charges against him, statutory rape. On the eve of his sentencing hearing, which was scheduled for February 1, 1978, Polanski fled to Europe and has not returned. Earlier this year, on September 26, he was arrested in Switzerland after the American authorities made a provisional request for his arrest. After spending sixty-seven days at a Zurich detention center, Polanski was transferred to house arrest at his chalet in the ski resort of Gstaad on Friday. Polanski is one of the most famous fugitives from American justice in the word. The question of whether Polanski’s celebrity has helped or hurt him hovers over his long legal battle. In Polanski’s case, the effect of his celebrity was doubly, and inconsistently, pernicious; it obscured both how badly Polanski treated his young victim, and how badly the legal system treated him. Tells about Polanski’s early life: his escape from the Warsaw ghetto and his career as a director. Polanski came to Hollywood in 1963. He married Sharon Tate in 1968. Tells about Tate’s murder by members of Charles Manson’s “family.” Describes the events leading up to Polanski’s sexual encounter with Samantha Gailey, whom he was ostensibly photographing for a feature on adolescent girls in Vogue Hommes. Discusses the legal case that followed in detail. Polanski was represented by Douglas Dalton; Gailey by Lawrence Silver; the judge was Laurence J. Rittenband. Considers how criminal sentencing has changed in California since the nineteen-seventies and gives an account of the legal wranglings that preceded Polanski’s flight. Polanski’s status as a fugitive has made it difficult, but not impossible, for him to continue to direct major films. Describes various attempts by Polanski’s lawyers to broker a resolution. In 2003, Polanki won the Oscar for Best Director for “The Pianist.” Mentions Marina Zenovich’s documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” Gives an account of the events leading up to Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland and describes the public response after he was arrested: the initial support for Polanski from other celebrities and the backlash that followed. It appears likely that at some point Polanski will be returned to California, and there he will face a legal situation of daunting complexity. Describes how Polanski continued to work on his new film, “The Ghost,” from his prison cell. The movie will be released, on schedule, next year.

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Peers of Roman Polanski came out to praise him for his talent and lament his arrest.

AC360°

When filmmaker Roman Polanski was arrested in September in Switzerland, he was on his way to accept an award for Lifetime Achievement at the Zurich Film Festival. During the week of his arrest more than 130 heavyweights in the movie industry had taken up Polanski's cause. Last week he was released from custody in Switzerland and placed under house arrest.

Take a look at the list of Hollywood supporters who signed a petition to release Polanski from jail.

View the entire list here...

CNN

Amanda Knox is in an Italian jail, sentenced to spend the next 26 years there for the 2007 slaying of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while the two were exchange students in Italy.But despite a trial lasting nearly a year, many questions about the case remain unanswered. Knox's family will talk to Larry King tonight at 9 p.m.

Go here and scroll down to view a photo gallery of Amanda Knox's childhood.

CNN

Amanda Knox is accused of murdering her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, on November 2, 2007, in Italy. She faces life in prison if found guilty.

Go here and scroll down to view the evidence in the Knox trial.

Editor's Note: An Italian jury found American student Amanda Knox guilty in the knifing death of British student Meredith Kercher. Barbie Nadeau will be on AC360° tonight at 10 p.m. E.T. to discuss the case.

Amanda Knox is led into the court in Perugia Friday

Barbie Nadeau
Newsweek Magazine

Amanda Knox is a household name in Italy, America, and the United Kingdom. Her face is immediately recognizable; her alleged crimes well known. (For those living under a rock for the last two years, she is the Seattle native standing trial in Perugia, Italy, for the sexual assault and murder of her British study-abroad roommate Meredith Kercher.) After a tedious trial that began last January, a verdict is expected sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning. If she is convicted, she will likely get a life sentence. If she is acquitted, she'll be on the first flight back to Seattle—along with every journalist who can get a seat.

But even if she escapes a prison term, "Foxy Knoxy" (as she called herself on social networking Web sites) has already lost the battle for her image. She still has defenders, in addition to her very vocal opponents, but she will never again be able to control how she is seen. In the press, Knox is portrayed either as an angel-faced devil or the clean-cut girl next door. Few follow her case without bordering on obsession. She is the darling of Italy's front pages and the vixen of the British tabloid press. Bloggers, at least six book authors, and a high-budget British Channel 4 documentary filmmaker are harvesting her cult following for big bucks. Rumors abound that her own high-dollar book deal is in the works. There is even talk of a movie about her life. She is 22.

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CNN

Amanda Knox, who is accused of murdering her roommate in Italy, was an easy child to raise in Seattle, Washington, along with her younger sisters Deanna and Ashley, her parents said. She took to soccer early on but hit the books as hard as she played.

Go here and scroll down to view a photo gallery of Amanda Knox's childhood.

Amanda Knox has been on trial in Italy for two years

Candace Dempsey
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Doug Preston is only too familiar with Judge Giuliano Mignini, the pubblico ministero (public prosecutor) holding UW honor student Amanda Knox, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede as suspects in the Nov. 1 murder of foreign exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy.

Preston is a journalist as well as a New York Times best-selling novelist and "student of crime."

His newest work, The Monster of Florence, is a nonfiction tale about the infamous serial killer who plagued Florence during the 1970s and 1980s. Preston's book about this killer, who was never caught, will hit stores in June.

Preston first encountered Mignini, one of the prosecutors in the Monster case, when he started researching the crime. Mignini didn't appreciate Preston and his writing partner, Mario Spezi, poking into the facts. He had Spezi arrested and thrown into Capanne prison, where the three Meredith suspects are also housed, and accused him of being the Monster of Florence himself. Spezi has since been freed.

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The Massacre in Maguindanao in the Philippines

Maria A. Ressa
Head, ABS-CBN News & Current Affairs
Former CNN Jakarta Bureau Chief

You can’t escape the laws of physics. Newton’s third law of motion states: “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In the world of governments and their security forces, it’s called blowback – a term first coined by the US Central Intelligence Agency in classified documents to describe US and British covert operations in Iran in 1953. They helped overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh, setting in motion a chain of events which inspired the revival of Islamic fundamentalism around the world.

Blowback happened again in Afghanistan in the late 80’s when the US funneled more than $3 billion, through Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, to build up the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. That sowed the seeds for 9/11 and the major terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia from 2001 to 2009. Among the key beneficiaries was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who helped train Osama bin Laden and thousands of Southeast Asian militants including the founder of the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, some of the Bali and JW Marriott bombers.

Blowback happened in Maguindanao in the southern Philippines – where warlords with private armies funded by the state wield political power.

It’s a complex situation: the power structure of government is a thin overlay on top of a complex social hierarchy based on families or clans. These clans periodically clash – feuds known as rido, which can be ignited by the flimsiest of reasons – a quarrel over women or a verbal slight. Clans became the foundation of electoral politics and determined the distribution of power and resources.

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