Legal News

Marcia Clark (Marcia Clark!) Throws Twist Into Polanski Matter

By Ashby Jones

We didn’t think the Polanski matter could get a whole lot stranger. But it has. And given the way this situation has unfolded in the last couple days, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that we think it’s going to get a lot weirder before all is said and done.

The news: Over at the Daily Beast today, Marcia Clark (yes, that Marcia Clark; the prosecutor in the OJ Simpson murder trial) writes a piece which, if true, could hurt Polanski’s case going forward.

The background requires a quick trip back to the late 1970s. Polanski pleaded guilty in 1977 to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. According to a variety of reports, Polanski pleaded guilty partly because the prosecution had sought probation rather than a lengthy prison sentence. Prior to sentencing, however, Polanski got word that the judge on the case, Laurence Rittenband, was planning to shift gears and instead imprison him for a long time. So Polanski fled to England, and then to France, where he’s spent most of the past 31 years.

So what happened in between Polanski’s guilty plea and his sentencing? According to a 2008 documentary, called Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, (which we’d imagine is showing up on Netflix queues with much more frequency now than it was a week ago) a Los Angeles prosecutor named David Wells confessed to buttonholing Rittenband — out of the presence of Polanski’s lawyer — and convinced him to impose a sentence that included prison time.

Last year, after the documentary came out, Polanski’s lawyers filed a request in Los Angeles to have the case dismissed, as a result of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. In February of this year, Polanski’s request was tentatively denied by Judge Peter Espinoza, who said that he would, however, make a ruling if Polanski appeared in court.

But Marcia Clark, in her piece out Wednesday in the Daily Beast, claims that she recently spoke to Wells and that Wells admitted to her that he lied in the documentary about having improper communications with Rittenband. According to Clark, Wells told her recently:

I lied. I know I shouldn't have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I'd told the judge what to do. . . . Look, after 30 years, I never thought they'd get the guy back here. I figured no one cared anymore, and no one here would ever see the film anyway. What can I say? I don't have a better reason than that. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Frankly, it seems very odd to us that a former deputy district attorney, some 20-odd-years later would admit on camera to committing misconduct. It seems even stranger for that deputy DA to later say that he lied about his confession.

Nevertheless, about Wells’s reversal, Clark says:

I believe him. It's absolutely forbidden to have one-sided communications with a judge about a pending case. I once knew Wells-rather well, actually. He was a brilliant lawyer, a great raconteur, and he had a wicked sense of humor-but unethical? Hardly.

In Clark’s mind, if what Wells says is true — that he lied to the filmmakers — it’s bad news for Polanski: She writes: “Wells' repudiation hurts them big-time. It's the equivalent of "I'm a liar and everything I say is a lie." By discrediting himself, he largely negates his value to Polanski.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 30, 2009 (boomark / email).