Report: Roman Polanski Wants to Return to U.S., Settle Child Rape Case

Fugitive director Roman Polanski will reportedly attempt to have his decades-long child rape case resolved so that he may return to the United States without fear of arrest or incarceration.

According to TMZ, the 83-year-old director’s attorney, Harland Braun, has asked a Los Angeles judge to review what it reports is a “long-secret transcript” of the prosecutor’s testimony during Polanski’s trial.

The attorney claims the transcript proves that the Pianist director had agreed to a plea deal to serve just 48 days in jail, and that the judge had agreed to the deal. Polanski was convicted of raping a child after a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 1977 and spent 42 days in prison before being released.

But the director later fled the country for Europe when he feared that the judge in his case backed out of the deal and suggested prosecutors give him 50 years in prison.

According to TMZ, Polanski’s victim has asked the judge to close the case without giving the director any more jail time.

Polanski has lived mainly in France in the years since he fled the United States, though he also holds Polish citizenship. The director has escaped extradition several times in the decades since his conviction, most recently in December, when Poland’s Supreme Court rejected a request by a lower court to have him returned to U.S. custody.

Polanski last attempted to return to the U.S. in 2014, when his attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, claiming the agency engaged in “serious misconduct” while prosecuting and attempting to extradite the director.

 

Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum