On March 10, 1977, Roman Polanski, a 43-year-old film director, was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with six offenses against Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), a 13-year-old girl: unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. At his arraignment, Polanski pleaded not guilty to all charges, but later accepted a plea bargain whose terms included dismissal of the five more serious charges in exchange for a guilty plea to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
Polanski underwent a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, and was placed on probation. However, upon learning that he was likely to face imprisonment and subsequent deportation, Polanski became a fugitive from justice hours before he was due to be formally sentenced, fleeing first to England and then to France in February 1978. Since then, Polanski has mostly lived in France and has avoided visiting any countries likely to extradite him to the United States.
Rape case On March 10, 1977, Polanski faced six charges involving drugging and raping 13-year-old Samantha Jane Gaileypage 3 of transcript via Roman Polanski, Fugitive Director June 10, 2008. TheSmokingGun. (now Samantha Geimer). The charges were unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of 18, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under the age of 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor. This ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea to a different charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
According to Geimer's testimony to the grand jury, Polanski had asked Geimer's mother (a television actress and model) if he could photograph the girl as part of his work for the French edition of Vogue, which Polanski had been invited to guest-edit. Her mother allowed a private photo shoot. Geimer testified that she felt uncomfortable during the first session, in which she posed topless at Polanski's request, and initially did not wish to take part in a second but nevertheless agreed to another shoot. This took place at the home of actor Jack Nicholson in the Mulholland area of Los Angeles.
When the crime was committed, Nicholson was on a ski trip in Colorado, and his live-in girlfriend Anjelica Huston, who was in L.A., had left the premises, but later returned while Polanski and Geimer were still there. Geimer was quoted in a later article as saying that Huston became suspicious of what was going on behind the closed bedroom door and began banging on it, but left when Polanski insisted they were finishing up the photoshoot. "We did photos with me drinking champagne", Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." In a 2003 interview, she recalled that she began to feel uncomfortable after he asked her to lie down on a bed, and described how she attempted to resist. "I said, 'No, no. I don't want to go in there. No, I don't want to do this. No!', and then I didn't know what else to do", she stated, adding: "We were alone and I didn't know what else would happen if I made a scene. So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured well, I guess I'll get to come home after this."
Geimer testified that Polanski provided champagne that they shared as well as part of a Quaalude, 2003 archive and despite her protests, he performed oral sex on her, and penetrated her both vaginally and anally, each time after being told "no" and being asked to stop.
Describing the event in his autobiography, Polanski stated that he did not drug Geimer, that she "wasn't unresponsive", and that she did not respond negatively when he inquired as to whether or not she was enjoying what he was doing. The 28-page probation report submitted to the court by Kenneth Fare, his parole officer, and signed by deputy Irwin Gold, excused his behavior due to his creative genius and being an immigrant from a land with different morals, placed some of the blame on the victim and her mother, and concluded by saying that there was evidence "that the victim was not only physically mature, but willing". The officers report also quoted two psychiatrists' denial of Polanski being "a pedophile" or "sexual deviant".
Claiming to protect Geimer from a trial, her attorney arranged a plea bargain. Polanski accepted, and, under the terms of the agreement, the five initial charges were dismissed. Instead, Polanski pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
Conviction and flight
Under the terms of the plea agreement, the court ordered Polanski to report to a state prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation, but granted a stay to allow him to complete his current project. Under the terms set by the court, he traveled to Europe to complete filming. While in Europe for the filming of the upcoming 1979 remake of Hurricane, Polanski was photographed at Oktoberfest 1977 with his arms on multiple young girls and jars of beer around him. He was subsequently ordered to return to California and reported to Chino State Prison for the evaluation period beginning on December 19, 1977, and was released after 42 of the 90 scheduled days. Polanski's lawyers expected that Polanski would receive probation at the subsequent sentencing hearing, with the probation officer, examining psychiatrist, and the victim all recommending against prison time. During this time, on January 20, 1978, Polanski lost his job as the director of Hurricane.The Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1978, page 47
Polanski's attorneys said that the presiding judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, suggested to them that he would send the director to prison and order him deported. According to the 2008 documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney David Wells showed Rittenband the photographs of Polanski partying in Munich with young girls, and said Polanski was being cavalier about the charges involving the 13-year-old girl. This would have constituted an ex parte communication, as although Wells was not an attorney of record in the case, he was technically a lawyer for one of the parties involved due to his work for the state of California. In response to the threat of imprisonment, Polanski became a fugitive from justice, fleeing the United States and going to England. Regarding the proposed sentencing, Rittenband said:
Polanski fled initially to London on February 1, 1978, where he maintained a residence. A day later he traveled on to France, where he held citizenship, thus avoiding the possibility of extradition to the United States by the United Kingdom. Consistent with its extradition treaty with the US, France can refuse to extradite its own citizens, and an extradition request later filed by US officials was denied. Polanski has never returned to England and later sold his home there. The US could still request the arrest and extradition of Polanski from other countries should he visit them, and Polanski has avoided visits to countries (such as the UK) that were likely to extradite him. In 1979, Polanski gave a controversial interview with novelist Martin Amis in which, discussing the case, he said "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But ... fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!" In 1983, Polanski told journalist Clive James that "I like the girls of that age. And because the girls of that age, for some reason like me." Later in this interview James asked, "Granted that you have this interest in young girls, and have never concealed that you have this interest in young girls, wasn't an incident like the one that happened more or less bound to happen eventually?" and Polanski responded, "Looking back at it, it probably was bound to happen, yes."
Arrest in Zurich On September 26, 2009, Polanski was detained by Swiss police at Zurich Airport while trying to enter Switzerland, in relation to his outstanding 1978 US arrest warrant. Polanski had planned to attend the Zurich Film Festival to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. The arrest followed a request by the United States that Switzerland apprehend Polanski. US investigators had learned of his planned trip from a fax sent on September 22, 2009, from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police to the United States Department of Justice's Office of International Affairs, which had given them enough time to negotiate with Swiss authorities and lay the groundwork for an arrest. Polanski had been subject of an Interpol red notice at the request of the United States since 2005.
The Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police said Polanski was put "in provisional detention". An arrest warrant or extradition to the United States could be subject to judicial review by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court and then the Federal Supreme Court, according to a ministry spokesman. Polanski announced that he intended to appeal extradition and hired lawyer Lorenz Erni to represent him. On October 6, his initial request for bail was refused by the Federal Department of Justice and Police; a spokesperson commented, "we continue to be of the opinion that there is a high risk of flight."
On May 2, 2010, Polanski published an open letter entitled "I can remain silent no longer!" on Bernard-Henri Lévy's web site. In it, he stated that on February 26, 2010, Roger Gunson (the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, retired by the time of the letter) testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren (the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question Gunson) that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that Polanski's term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence he would have to serve. Polanski also stated that Gunson added that it was false to claim (as the present district attorney's office does in their request for his extradition) that the time he spent in Chino was for the purpose of a diagnostic study.
On July 12, 2010, the Swiss court rejected the US request and released Polanski from custody.
Reactions to the arrest In response to the arrest, the foreign ministers of both France and Poland urged Switzerland to release Polanski, who holds citizenship of both countries..
Over 160 film directors, actors, screenwriters, and producers signed a petition, started by Bernard-Henri Lévy, which urged Polanski's release. The petition was signed by many prominent individuals in the film industry including Harrison Ford, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Guillermo del Toro, Sam Mendes, Jeremy Irons, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Tilda Swinton, John Landis, Monica Bellucci and Asia Argento. Several signatories, such as Emma Thompson and Natalie Portman, later removed their names from the petition or expressed regret over signing it.
Lévy's journal, La Règle du jeu, issued the following text for his petition:"Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.
He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings.
Seventy-six years old, a survivor of Nazism and of Stalinist persecutions in Poland, Roman Polanski risks spending the rest of his life in jail for deeds which would be beyond the statute-of-limitations in Europe.