Roman Polanski Still Fighting To Avoid Justice

Convicted sex offender Roman Polanski’s latest film, The Ghost Writer, is now in release to good, but less than rave reviews. The movie, about the ghost writing of an autobiography for a former British Prime Minister, is a dark mystery starring Pierce Brosnan as the fictional former PM, Adam Lang.

Meanwhile, Polanski himself remains under house arrest in Switzerland after having been picked up by Swiss authorities on an American warrant last September. Initial attempts by his attorneys to fight extradition to the United States were rejected in January 2010, but a new motion to derail extradition was filed last week.

Polanski was charged in a six count grand jury indictment in 1977 following an incident at the home of Jack Nicholson, who was not home at the time, where Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl. In a plea deal that dropped five of the six counts, including the most serious offenses, Polanski pleaded guilty to one count of Unlawful Sexual Intercourse with a Minor, commonly known as statutory rape. Based on his guilty plea, Polanski was convicted but was never sentenced. He underwent a pre-sentencing psychiatric evaluation, but fled the country before his sentencing hearing.

Now 76, Polanski has been fighting, since before his arrest by Swiss police last year, to have his conviction overturned. In the most recent filing by his attorneys, Polanski again raises the allegation that the judge in his 1977 case engaged in judicial misconduct. The case is now in the California Superior Court. The allegations about the judge are old and have previously been rejected as not being grounds for dismissal of the charges.

The accusations raised by Polanski are that, prior to sentencing, the judge had a private meeting with a member of the DA’s office who showed the judge pictures of Polanski partying in Munich with his arms around two young, ostensibly under-aged, girls. Judges are generally precluded from having ex parte meetings. Ex parte meetings are ones where one party is present at the meeting, but the other party, in this case Polanski’s attorney, is not. Ex parte meetings are grounds for disciplinary action against the offending judge, but are generally not grounds for dismissing a case. The usual result is simply to assign another judge, uncorrupted by ex parte contact, to conduct the sentencing.

Nothing presented by Polanski’s attorneys contradicts his plea of guilty. The new filing does request the appointment of special counsel to investigate possible knowledge by the prosecuting DA of the judge’s meeting with the other deputy DA. The attorney who allegedly met with the judge was not assigned to the Polanski case. No decision has yet been made on the request to appoint special counsel.

Roman Polanski remains a convicted sex offender who has never faced full justice for the crime to which he has admitted guilt. It now appears that he is doing all he can to delay, avoid and defeat attempts to hold him to account for the statutory rape of a 13 year old girl, all the while basking in the glory of a newly released film.

[Author's Note: In researching recent articles on this subject, most were reviews of the movie that either failed altogether to mention his conviction or devoted a cusory paragraph to it in passing. The complicity of the people who helped in the production of this movie and its promotion, including reviewers, I leave for discussion.]