A couple of weeks ago we reported on how Roman Polanski’s lawyers had gone to court in California to try and get the unlawful sex with a minor charges dropped, so that he wouldn’t have to be extradited back to the US.
The Pianist director is currently under house arrest in Switzerland while he fights attempts to remove him to America, where he faces 30-year-old charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl, which he fled from when he discovered a deal he’d worked out with prosecutors was going to be ignored by the judge and he would be jailed.
However, in news that’s unlikely to make Roman feel more festive, his appeal has been denied by the California courts. They basically reiterated judgements in earlier attempts to have the charges dropped (which took place before Polanski was arrested in Switzerland), where they agreed with Polanski’s lawyers that there seemed to be major irregularities in how the case was originally handled and that the judge may well have been involved in misconduct, but that it needed to be thoroughly investigated by a lower court. They also agreed with the prosecution that legal precedent says that a fugitive cannot seek relief from the courts unless they hand themselves into the relevant authorities and turn up to seek the dismissal of charges themselves.
The general concensus seems to be that if Polanski is extradited back to the US, he will be briefly jailed before the charges are dropped, and these latest legal moves may be an attempt to get the process going before Polanski is sent to America (although the Swiss authorities are looking at the director’s appeal against extradition, it’s felt that it’s unlikely to succeed). If his lawyers succeed, it would mean Polanski would be sent to the US but would only have to face a very short time in prison before walking out a free man.