Legal Commentary

CA Appeals Court Rejects Roman Polanski's Motion to Dismiss Case

By Jeralyn

A California appeals court has rejected Roman Polanski's bid to dismiss his 1977 case due to prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.

The 70 page opinion is here (pdf).

We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in applying the fugitive disentitlement doctrine and refusing to consider dismissing the action. In so doing, we do not disregard the extremely serious allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct that have been brought forward, but urge the parties to take steps to investigate and to respond to the claims.

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Update: I've now read the opinion. I'm going to quote at length, assuming that most people won't bother to read it and will just assume Polanski lost. As you'll see if you keep reading, I think the Court all but signals Polanksi will ultimately prevail, if not with a complete dismissal, with no more than time served.

Update: My distillation of the 70 page opinion was 4,500 words, way too long for a blog post, so I've removed it from this post and placed it here (pdf).

An appeals court decides questions of law. It does not decide new facts. So it can't decide the ultimate question of whether Polanski was treated unfairly. But, this opinion all but screams, as I've opined for months, Roman Polanski went for a ride on the elevator of justice, and all he got was the shaft. Free Roman.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 21, 2009 (boomark / email).