A Polish court has rejected the United States’ request to extradite director Roman Polanski, who pleaded guilty in 1977 to having “unlawful sex” with a 13-year-old girl (Polanski was 43 at the time) and served 42 days in jail before fleeing the country to avoid a final hearing where he believed he could be sentenced to prison. From the New York Times:
At a hearing in Krakow, Judge Dariusz Mazur ruled that deportation would be an “obviously unlawful” deprivation of liberty for Mr. Polanski, and added that California was unlikely to be ready to humanely incarcerate the 82-year-old filmmaker, given his age.
Polanski has French and Polish citizenship and has been in Krakow, Poland, to shoot a movie. A U.S. attempt to have the director extradited from Switzerland in 2010 was also unsuccessful.
You can read about the details of Polanski’s crime in this Smoking Gun post, which includes a transcript of grand jury testimony; be aware that the material is graphic and upsetting. In 2013 Samantha Geimer, the victim of Polanski’s crime, wrote a memoir in which she condemned what she sees as the sensationalization and exploitation of her case by authorities. Said Geimer in 2008: “I wish somebody would step up and say, ‘Time served, case dismissed.’ “
