The Philippine Online Chronicles

Roman Polanski is a critically-acclaimed director who has won Academy Awards for the Holocaust film The Pianist. He is a French national who traces his roots in Poland and is respected and admired for his ability to make great films. The flip side to this of course is that he is wanted in the United States and other nations because of an existing warrant for his arrest regarding an incident that involved sexual abuse of a minor.

The United States has been trying to extradite Polanski from several countries in Europe in an effort to bring him to justice over three decades after he drugged a then thirteen year old Sarah Geimer in Jack Nicholson's house. The case was heard back in 1977 and Polanski has agreed to plead guilty for the charges. Geimer alleges that Polanski gave her champagne and a sedative to subdue her.

Polanski was found guilty and served 42 days of his sentence. He was released after a 42-day in-prison psychiatric evaluation. It was widely expected that Polanski would probably get a fine or a probation sentence but the judge apparently wanted something heftier like a few years in jail. This prompted the director to fly to Europe before the actual penalty was to be assessed in the courts. He allegedly fled just a few hours before the actual sentencing. Since then, Polanski has been technically in hiding from the United States’ judicial system seeking some sort of asylum and safe haven in countries that does not have extradition treaties with the US. An extradition treaty allows two countries to freely send back suspected and convicted criminals between the two of them without much fanfare and red tape.

Even during the time that Polanski won the Best Director award during the 2002 Oscars, Polanski was holed up somewhere in Europe safe from the long arm of American justice. In January of 2010 however, an American judge opened the case and ordered the arrest of Polanski for sentencing. The amount of time that he has taken running from the law would certainly be taken against him. Polanski was in his mid 40s when the crime was committed. Polanski is now nearing his 77^th birthday.

He was arrested in Switzerland last year as he was travelling to accept a lifetime achievement award. In a surprising turn, the nation of Switzerland chose not to turn him over to the Americans citing technicalities. The US government could not hide their disappointment with how the Swiss have handled the situation. The decision to not surrender Polanski to American authorities by honouring existing extradition treaties meant that Polanski is now a free man.

Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley chose to put the situation in the simplest of terms – “a thirteen year old girl was drugged and raped by an adult.” Hillary Clinton’s assistant secretary then says that there is no technical issue in that fact alone. The US Justice Department’s criminal division is still keen on pursuing the case and will be studying their options in the following days.