Quote Originally Posted by TinCow View Post
Incorrect. The US has jurisdiction over:

1) Anyone who commits a crime inside the United States or on US territory.
2) Anyone who commits a crime against a United States citizen, even if that crime occurred outside the United States.
3) Any United States citizen, regardless of what they have done, where they did it, and who they did it to.

The US has jurisdiction over Polanski under #1. Switzerland's failure to hand him over has nothing to do with jurisdiction, that's an entirely separate issue from extradition.
The same holds true for any country, simply substitute the country name. No, the point is that there is a concept of “primacy” of jurisdiction: e.g. in the Neterlands it is Dutch law that even a US citizen will have to abide by, or risk prosecution under Dutch law -- even if under USA law there would be no case to answer to (e.g. carrying guns). In Switzerland, it is the Swiss version of law which matters.

@Sasaki: I am not arguing that what Roman Polanski did is not deserving of extradition (not to mention proper punishment). I'm arguing that the Swiss run their own independent country and therefore that they get to decide who is extradited from Switzerland and who isn't. The specific charges are not all that relevant to this.
@Rory: Polanski is a French citizen so he cannot be extradited from France (legal protection). The USA could've asked the French to launch charges of their own, but the USA didn't do this. So that's what, 42 years of not doing anything about it... ?