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29/9/2009: Filmmakers call for Polanski's Release

On 22^nd April 2010, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal dismissed without issuing an opinion, 76-year-old director Roman Polanski’s bid to be sentenced in absentia for a charge of unlawful intercourse with a minor in 1977.    Polanski’s lawyers had repeatedly contested that he should not have to return to the United States to be sentenced, and in its latest failed appeal, called for him to be sentenced to time already served.   They also sought the appointment of a special counsel to investigate new evidence from a former prosecutor who felt that the judge in the original case had acted improperly.

The court also dismissed a petition by Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, who was by then a mother of three living in Hawaii, to have the case dismissed, stating that to dismiss a case because the victim had forgiven the defendant would set an unacceptable precedent.

The court’s decision came despite an unprecedented attempt to intervene by French head of state Nicolas Sarkozy, who attempted to deliver a personal letter to US president Barack Obama at the anti-nuclear proliferation summit in Washington earlier in April 2010.   The letter, which Obama apparently refused to read because it was not delivered according to diplomatic protocol, pleaded for Polanski to be spared prison.   Polanski and his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, were both close friends of Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni.

Switzerland had said it would not decide on whether to extradite Polanski until any appeal over his US trial was over, and that even then it would only extradite the director if he faced a sentence longer than six months.   US prosecutors said Polanski faced up to two years.   The director still had the option of launching a further appeal with the Supreme Court in California, but otherwise, a Swiss judicial source was reported to have said, he could be flown back to America in September 2010.

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