Judge: Polanski must return to US

A Los Angeles judge said tonight fugitive film director Roman Polanski must return to the US to be sentenced in a decades-old sex case.

Polanski’s lawyers are likely to appeal against Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza’s ruling.

Lawyers for Polanski, 76, say he should be sentenced in abstentia to time already served after pleading guilty in 1978 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

But prosecutors insist Polanski must appear in a Los Angeles court and not be permitted to manipulate the justice system.

Polanski is under house arrest in his Swiss holiday home.

Polanski, arrested on a US warrant, spent more than 60 days in a Swiss jail before being transferred to house arrest on December 4.

An lawyer for Polanski’s victim had also urged Judge Espinoza to have the director sentenced in his absence.

But Michael Brennan, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said it was highly unusual for that to happen.

In court documents, Polanski’s lawyers said the late Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband sentenced the director in 1978 to a diagnostic study at a California prison where he served 42 days.

Although the judge told lawyers that would be Polanski’s full sentence, he later indicated he was going to renege on the bargain and give him a harsher sentence at a scheduled hearing.

Polanski then fled to France and has been a fugitive ever since.

His lawyers say the judge’s promise is binding and Polanski has served his full sentence. They have asked Judge Espinoza for a full hearing with witnesses about allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, was 13 when she met Polanski for a modelling shoot in Los Angeles in 1977. Polanski was accused of plying her with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill, then raping her at Jack Nicholson’s house.

He was initially indicted on six felony counts, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy. He later pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.

His wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner said today she “understands perfectly” that women were shocked by the case, but in the 1970s, when the crime took place, society viewed sex and drugs in a different light.

She told Elle magazine her husband, who has two young children, was a “marvellous” man.

“My husband never believed he was above the law. The proof is that he pleaded guilty,” Ms Seigner said.