Legal News

Polanski, in a ?Fighting Mood,? Will Resist Extradition

By Ashby Jones

Already, the Roman Polanski situation’s got just about everything you’d want: sex, drugs, crime, Hollywood, Jack Nicholson, and Charles Manson.

But it — yes — is likely to get even more interesting. Already, it’s blossomed into an issue of some significance on the diplomatic front, and we’re only days removed from Polanski’s detention in Switzerland. Click here for our LB post from earlier Monday, which links to several news stories from today’s papers.

The latest: According to the AP, Polanski is in a “fighting mood” and will fight attempts to have him extradited from Switzerland to California.

Polanski’s challenge, according to the AP: to prove to a Swiss court that the U.S. request was “illegal,” and that he therefore should be released from Swiss custody.

How might he do that? Polanski might argue that Swiss courts should throw out the case on account of misconduct by the original prosecutor and judge. The lower court, Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza in Los Angeles, had dismissed Polanski’s bid to throw out the case because the director failed to appear in court, but said there was “substantial misconduct” in the handling of the original case.

So what about the issue of possible prosecutorial or judicial misconduct? Frank A. Rubino, a Miami-based defense attorney who has represented defendants such as former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and has handled “many, many” extraditions, told the WSJ’s Jennifer Forsyth Monday that Polanski might try to convince a Swiss court that improprieties existed in the initial case.

"The extradition is going to be in Switzerland,” says Rubino. If a “Swiss lawyer can convince the Swiss court that there were improprieties in [Polanski's] conviction, they may say ‘Well, that's not a valid conviction.’ If they make a finding that it wasn't valid, then they might say ‘We are not going to send him back on a invalid conviction.’ That could fly. That's a pretty good argument."

What about the argument that the victim, Samantha Geimer, no longer cares if Polanski serves time? Rubino says that too might be an avenue to argue before a Swiss judge.

"You might argue-I don't know how successful it might be-but you can try– that if he were to be sent back to the U.S. that the victim would appear, she would say she has no interest in prosecuting him, etc., so therefore he probably would not get sentenced to jail. So we would all be wasting our time and money sending him back, just so he can return back to Europe in no time.

Rubino adds: "That's not a great argument but it's there."

In any event, Swiss Justice spokesman Guido Balmer told the AP that extradition is not a foregone conclusion; that an arrangement whereby Polanski is released on bail but forbidden from leaving Switzerland is “not entirely excluded” under Swiss law. But he said Switzerland’s top criminal court would undertake a thorough examination of evidence before deciding on any request, and that would take time.

In any event, Polanski is likely to have a handful of European nations on his side. Already, France and Poland have urged Switzerland to free him on bail and pressed U.S. officials all the way up to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the case.

“(Polanski was) thrown to the lions,” said French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand. “In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America that has just shown its face.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).