A judge has rejected director Roman Polanski’s bid to be sentenced in absentia in a three-decade-old child-sex case.<\/p>\n
Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that Polanski, 76, will have to come back Los Angeles to be sentenced.<\/p>\n
"I have made it clear he needs to surrender," the judge said. <\/p>\n
Polanski’s attorneys said they would appeal.<\/p>\n
The famed film director is under house arrest in Switzerland, where he is waiting to learn whether the Swiss government will extradite him to the U.S. to face sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
Polanski received some support this week from his victim.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In papers filed in Superior Court on Thursday, Samantha Geimer’s lawyer accused
\nthe Los Angeles County district attorney’s office of violating state
\nvictims’ rights statutes by not consulting Geimer before seeking
\nextradition. <\/p>\n
In the filing, attorney Lawrence Silver wrote
\nthat Marsy’s Law — a 2008 statute passed by ballot initiative — gives
\ncrime victims the right "to reasonably confer with the prosecuting
\nagency, upon request, regarding … the determination whether to
\nextradite the defendant."
<\/br>
<\/br>The attorney said he wrote to
\nprosecutors in July and made clear that Geimer wanted to meet with them
\nand that she planned to "exercise every right that she may have under
\nthe Victims’ Bill of Rights." Two months later, Polanski was arrested
\nin Zurich on a three-decade-old arrest warrant, and prosecutors
\nsubsequently submitted a formal extradition request. A Swiss court has
\nyet to decide the matter.
<\/br>
<\/br>Hours after the documents were filed, the district attorney’s office fired back with its own filing.
<\/br>
<\/br>Deputy
\nDist. Atty. David Walgren wrote that over the last year, Geimer and her
\nattorney ignored repeated offers to discuss the case. The filing
\nincluded copies of 11 e-mails that Walgren sent to Silver — five of
\nwhich contained offers to talk about the case.
<\/br>
<\/br>"Despite multiple
\ninvitations to meet and confer, Mr. Silver has never once responded to
\nthese entreaties," Walgren wrote. He suggested the victims’ rights
\nstatute was being twisted to benefit Polanski.
<\/br>
<\/br>Marsy’s Law
\n"was intended to protect the rights of victims. It was not intended to
\nbe vicariously used by a defendant to avoid prosecution," Walgren
\nwrote.
<\/br><\/p>\n
Geimer was 13 at the time of the crime and is now a
\nwife and mother living in Hawaii. She has never changed her account of
\nbeing raped and sodomized by Polanski during a photo shoot at Jack
\nNicholson’s house in 1977, but her stance toward Polanski changed in
\nthe years after she and the director settled a civil suit brought
\nagainst him for sexual assault and other claims. <\/p>\n
Under the terms of the
\n1993 confidential agreement, he agreed to pay her at least $500,000.<\/p>\n
— Harriet Ryan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A judge has rejected director Roman Polanski’s bid to be sentenced in absentia in a three-decade-old child-sex case. Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that Polanski, 76, will have to come back Los Angeles to be sentenced. "I have made it clear he needs to surrender," the judge said. Polanski’s attorneys said they would appeal. The famed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}