Polanski: courts are like Nazis
STATES: Roman Polanski has compared the US judicial system to the Nazis after being thwarted in an attempt to close the 40-year-old child rape case that has overshadowed his career.
In documents submitted to the Los Angeles court presiding over the case and seen by the Hollywood news website Deadline.com, the director’s lawyer, Harland Braun, wrote: ‘‘Mr Polanski was as justified in fleeing this court’s illegal conduct as he was to flee the Germans who invaded Poland.’’
Braun was seeking to persuade Judge Scott Gordon at the Los Angeles County Superior Court to reconsider his recent decision to deny Polanski, 83, any guarantee that he will not serve further jail time if he returns to the US for the first time in 39 years to face sentencing.
Polanski, who is Jewish, spent his early childhood trying to escape the Holocaust after the Nazis invaded his native Poland in 1939, when he was 6. His experiences helped to shape one of his most acclaimed films, The Pianist.
He has spent almost four decades as a fugitive from US justice, having fled the country just before sentencing after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with 13-year-old Samantha Gailey at a Los Angeles modelling shoot in 1977. Now based in France, he wants to return to the US, and is seeking a guarantee that he can face sentencing without the threat of further jail time.
Gordon did agree to unseal testimony given in 2010 by the 1977 prosecutor, which Braun argues contains vital new information. That hearing has been set for April 26. - The Times
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