It looks like Roman Polanski had better get used to hairy armpits, dogpoo and comical nonchalance, because he’ll be staying in France for a while.
Why? Because Roman Polanski has lost his bid to get his 1978 child sex charges dropped, so the fugitive status currently keeping him from returning to America remains firmly in force.
So Roman Polanski has two choices – he can either continue living in Europe where he’s respected as one of the world’s greatest-ever directors, or he can surrender to American authorities and face jail. It’ll probably be the latter. Seriously, have you ever been to Europe?
The funny thing about admitting to police that you had sex with an illegally young girl is that it tends to come back and bite you on the arse. Just look at poor old Roman Polanski – it’s been three decades since he allegedly anally raped a 13-year-old girl and then definitely pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor and, just because he freaked out before sentencing and ran away to France, he’s apparently a fugitive now.
However, it looked quite a lot like Roman Polanski was going to get his charges dismissed, after a documentary was released claiming all kinds of unethical conduct on the part of the court during his original trial. The trouble there was that the court was only going to consider dropping Polanski’s charges if he went to America in person, and Polanski was worried that it was all just a big trap to arrest him at the airport.
And – long story short – because of that protracted stand-off, Roman Polanski definitely can’t have his charges dropped ever. But, hey, at least he’s welcome to surrender to the American justice system and be given an almost-guaranteed stint in prison whenever he likes, so that’s something. The LA Times reports:
Judge Peter Espinoza told a packed courtroom that he found the core argument in Polanski’s request for a dismissal of charges to be credible. “There was substantial… misconduct that occurred during the pendency of this case,” Espinoza said. But, Polanski’s fugitive status left him no choice but to deny the request. Espinoza suspended his ruling for 30 days to allow Polanski to discuss surrendering.
Stupid fugitive status. If only Roman Polanski had been smart enough not to leave America before sentencing, and had merely sat through the entire duration of his inevitable lengthy jail sentence before being released into the public as a largely unemployed convicted paedophile, then there’s a chance that his charges might have possibly been dropped 30 years afterwards. Hindsight can be such a bitch, can’t it?
But although this news must be a profound disappointment to Roman Polanski, there’s no point getting down about it. After all, if he’s staying in Europe then at least he’ll know that the furious mob of people that follows him everywhere takes a couple of hours off in the afternoon for a nap. He wouldn’t get that in America.