Photo of the Week and More on the Polanski Case

Here is the lovely photo of the week from our contributor, Andrea!  Thanks so much!

And things are not looking good for Polanski, although he hasn't completely given up yet:

Polanski absentia bid dismissed by California court

Agence France-Presse April 23, 2010

LOS ANGELES – A California appeals court Thursday quashed a bid by Roman Polanski to be tried in absentia for his child sex case, clearing the way for the director to be extradited back to the United States.

California's 2nd District Court of Appeal tossed an appeal filed by Polanski's legal team following a hearing in January, where the film-maker's request to be sentenced without having to return from Europe was denied.

The appellate court panel found that Polanski had "failed to demonstrate" that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza had lacked the discretion to deny the director's earlier absentia request.

Dismissal of the appeal removes another obstacle from the path of Los Angeles prosecutors seeking sentencing of infamous Oscar-winning director Polanski, 76, in his decades-old child sex abuse case.

Polanski is under house arrest in Switzerland following his detention last September on a US arrest warrant for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Swiss officials said in February that a decision on whether to move forward with Polanski's extradition could not be made until the director had exhausted his US appeals.

Authorities in Switzerland have however emphasized that any extradition process could take about a year once likely appeals by Polanski against his return had been heard by Switzerland's highest courts.

Earlier Thursday, the same California appeals court dismissed a motion by the victim in the case who had sought to have the proceedings dismissed.

The petition, filed on behalf of Samantha Geimer, was "summarily denied by order," court documents showed.

Geimer's attorney, Lawrence Silver, filed court papers last month asking the court to intervene based on alleged judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

"Samantha Geimer was first victimized by Polanski. Whatever harm was done to her 33 years ago by Polanski is now a memory," Silver wrote.

In a 12-page response, prosecutors countered that Geimer "has no right or authority to dictate the outcome of a criminal case, nor is she entitled to examine evidence possessed either by the prosecution or the defense."

In January, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza denied requests by Polanski and Geimer to dismiss the case, along with a request by Geimer to order prosecutors to withdraw their extradition request for Polanski.

Polanski is alleged to have given Geimer champagne and drugs during a 1977 photo shoot at the Hollywood Hills home of actor friend Jack Nicholson before having sex with her despite her protests.

The director was initially charged with six felony counts, including rape and sodomy. The charge was later reduced to unlawful sexual intercourse after a plea deal agreed in part to spare his victim the ordeal of a trial.

Polanski later served 42 days at a secure unit undergoing psychiatric evaluation but fled the United States on the eve of his sentencing in 1978 amid fears that the trial judge planned to go back on a previously agreed plea deal.

Polanski's flight from justice came after a string of hit films including "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown."

The director, whose wife Sharon Tate was horrifically murdered by Charles Manson's "family" in 1969, won an Oscar for his 2002 film "The Pianist" but was unable to collect the award because of his fugitive status.

Polanski has been confined at his ski chalet in the Swiss resort of Gstaad since being released from custody December 4.

Here is another article that says he will fight the extradition:

Polanski Will Fight Extradition, Lawyers Say

LA Weekly April 23, 2010

By Dennis Romero

Despite Thursday's setback in which a state appeals court turned down his request to be sentenced while he remains overseas, Roman Polanski said through his lawyers Friday that he will challenge attempts by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office to have him extradited from Switzerland.

Yesterday's ruling might have been the end of the line for the director's attempts to live a European life outside the reach of his 33-year-old sex-with-a-minor case: Swiss officials said they would not extradite him to L.A. until the sentencing matter was decided. Well, it's been decided. But attorney Douglas Dalton released a statement on behalf of Polanski that reads, in part, "The Court of Appeal decision yesterday did not decide the issue of extradition."

Besides bringing up an allegation of misconducted in the original 1977 trial, in which a prosecutor is accused of having inappropriately influenced the late judge in the case behind closed doors, Dalton did not say what further recourse Polanski's legal team would have in holding off extradition.

The director fled to France in 1978 after he says prosecutors reneged on a plea deal and the judge indicated he would serve more time than the more than 40 days he spent in psychiatric evaluation for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He hasn't been back to L.A. since, but the D.A.'s office caught wind of a trip he had planned to Switzerland last summer to pick up an award and had him picked up. Polanski has been under house arrest at his Swiss chalet since December.

Photo of the Week, More Magnificient Matondang Art and Polanski News

Photo of the Week:

Classy Black and White photo of Sharon taken by Terry O'Neill.

Kerstien Matondang has created more beautiful art for Sharon.

I recall Sharon saying she had a teddy bear she still kept as an adult that she had had as a child.

Please look at her site here:  http://kerstien.se/sharoninart.htm

More On Polanski:

From The Times:

January 16, 2010

Los Angeles court to hear Roman Polanski’s plea to be tried in absentia
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6990371.ece

It is not Alcatraz, nor Robben Island, and Roman Polanski is not singing Jailhouse Rock. The film director’s current prison, the chalet Milky Way, looks out on to his favourite ski slopes on the Eggli mountain and, even if you close the window, you can hear the church bells from down the valley.

“We miss him — he’s always cheerful,” said the owner of the bakery where Polanski used to buy his croissants. Now his electronic foot tag would sound the alarm if he left his golden cage and strayed down the hill for breakfast.

The 76-year-old film-maker, officially a fugitive from American justice, has been in and out of Switzerland for 30 years and was treated as a welcome celebrity before suddenly being arrested by the Swiss authorities in what was seen by many as an attempt to curry favour with the United States.

On Friday, a Los Angeles court will consider Polanski’s plea to be tried in absentia. If granted, it will allow his lawyers to explain in detail the reasons why he fled the US in 1978 while awaiting sentencing for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl — and negate any need to extradite him.

In the meantime, warns Roger Seifriz, the head of tourism in the region, the locals should stop talking to the press about Polanski. “Is it correct to answer all journalist questions?” he asked in an open letter to the people of Gstaad. “Or would it be more appropriate to think twice and then reply: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t speak about it’?”
 
Mr Seifriz is plainly worried not just about Polanski’s privacy, but also about scaring away Gstaad’s remaining publicity-shy celebrities. The village has got the message and has, for the most part, closed ranks.
 
Three tribes inhabit Gstaad. The first are locals; the second, the well-off tourists, many from Russia, who ski, shop, eat expensively and then go home. The third is the chalet tribe.

“Stick around until midnight — that’s when they come out,” says Andrea Scherz, the owner of the Palace Hotel, which looms over Gstaad like Kafka’s Castle.


Sure enough, the huge lobby, with its crackling wood fire, antlers, deep, foetal chairs and backgammon boards, is the social hub of the chalet world.

“They come to see and be seen,” says Mr Scherz, whose grandfather bought the place after the war. He persuaded Louis Armstrong to play in the lobby, and brought in crooners such as Maurice Chevalier.

The most expensive chalets, which sell for as much as €7 million (£6 million), are in the Oberbort district of Gstaad, close enough to the Palace to make it into a second living room.

There the crowd swells and ebbs as in a railway terminus: the half-brother of Osama bin Laden; the Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone (who owns a hotel on the Gstaad Promenade); the dress designer Valentino (watch out for his liveried servant walking the dogs); assorted racing drivers and, naturally, legions of beautiful young women.

Polanski admits to having schoolgirls around to the chalet after the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969. “Kathy, Madeleine, Sylvia and others whose names I forget played a fleeting but therapeutic role in my life,” he wrote in his memoirs. “They were all between 16 and 19 years old . . .”

The chalet community is divided about him. Some dinner hostesses refuse to have his name mentioned at table, others see him as a relic of the 1970s, when nasty Los Angeles vices were imported to the valley.

In the old days, Gstaad was the hangout for British Hollywood: David Niven (who is buried just down the valley), Peter Sellars, Richard Burton, Joan Collins, even Julie Andrews. Polanski, by contrast, brought Jack Nicholson to the place: an altogether different kettle of fish.

The Gstaad super-rich are, though, mostly forgiving of the delinquent director. It is a place where people can afford to be politically incorrect.

“He works hard, plays hard,” says a backgammon player in the Palace. “They should leave him alone.”