Oscar winning director Roman Polanski’s efforts to have 40 year old rape charges in the U.S. against him dismissed have failed. Not even famed attorney Alan Dershowitz could help him in this matter.
Polanski, a French citizen and Holocaust survivor, has been in exile in Europe for 4 decades since he fled the U.S. due to an impending conviction for rape. Even though a plea bargain was in place which included no jail time for him, Polanski panicked and ran away before his court date.
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Earlier this month the 81 year old filed a motion to have the original charges which are still pending against him tossed due to what they asserted was prosecutorial misconduct.
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Brandlin issued a nine page ruling in which he dismissed the motion, saying that Polanski must first return to California in person before any such procedure can be held.
The judge wrote that, “Polanski is not entitled to avail himself of this court’s power to hear his demands while he openly stands in an attitude of contempt of a legal order from this very court.”
Former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson told the LA Times that she was not surprised by the court’s ruling. She said, “After attacking all the judges of that court, it’s not particularly surprising that the judges were not willing to go out on a limb and grant this extraordinary request. There’s not a lot of new law in support of the motion. The legal arguments they made are the same legal arguments we’ve heard before.”
