Even reaching the highest honor an artist could hope for, commissions from the Pope himself, couldn't save an artist who broke the law.  A nation owes no person more than their rights, even if they are "national treasures".

Comparing Polanski to a recording engineer/producer, is a waste of time and a red herring imo.

... but how you evaluate their relative artistic contributions is entirely subjective, depending on one's view of the relative importance of film and popular music.

Wikipedia devotes an approximately equal amount of space to each of them, for example. And, just to quote a single data point:

The 1965 song "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," produced and co-written by Spector for the The Righteous Brothers, is listed by BMI as the song with the most U.S. air play in the 20th century.

Has Polanski created anything having an equivalent impact on popular culture? So, for every argument film buffs might make about Polanski's importance, I have no doubt that music fans could make a similar case for Spector.

Predictably, we now have your weird aggressive hyperbole about 'pounds of flesh' and 'burn him at the stake', which has nothing to do with what I said. (This is what I meant by saying that 'kneejerk' is in the eye of the beholder.)

Some people, like many of the commenters on this thread, see a long incarceration for drugging and raping a child as appropriate accountability for a heinous and hurtful behavior that for too long has been tolerated in our society with too much leniency and doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. Others, perhaps like you and kdog and jeralyn and others, see it as unnecessary and serving no purpose, and/or focus more on the legal aspects than the morality of the criminal behavior. OK - I think I said this like 3 times now - different moral standards, different ideas about what to do about these things, different opinions.

He was initially indicted on six felony counts and faced up to life in prison. Instead, he pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and five other counts were dismissed.

Polanski, who had already been incarcerated for a psychological diagnosis for 42 days, skipped sentencing that would have sent him back to prison, and fled to France. The judge issued a warrant for his arrest that is still in effect.

The maximum sentence was 50 years, although prosecutors had said at the time that the typical sentence was 16 months to three years in prison.

Polanski was released after 42 days of his 90-day term, but here the story gets complicated. Polanski had been led to believe by Rittenband that after Chino, his time behind bars would be over. However, the judge was overheard boasting at his country club that he would put Polanski away "for 100 years"

[...]

Rittenband was eventually removed from the Polanski case, but was heard declaring, when he stepped down from the bench in 1989, that he would get Polanski yet.

[...]

As far as Geimer is concerned, the case is closed: Polanski settled out of court with her in 1993. She now lives and works in Hawaii, has been married for 18 years and has three children. She finally went public in the US in 1997, appearing on TV and forgiving Polanski. She also made a statement in the LA Times in 2003, saying the film-maker should be allowed to return to the US: the longer he remained a fugitive, she said, the longer she would have to live with the story. Zenovich was impressed by Geimer when they met: "Everyone is so caught up in what happened, and she's the one it happened to, and she got past it."