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Polanski sex charge could be dropped

By Carla Bevan on Wednesday 3 December 2008

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Roman Polanski, Celebrity News, Marie Claire

Lawyers working for legendary film director Roman Polanski have appealed for his 30-year-old sex charge to be dropped.

Polanski was famously accused of - and pleaded guilty to - having sex with a 13-year-old during the Seventies, forcing him to flee the country to France to escape a possible life sentence.

He has never been able to return to America for fear of arrest and has even avoided making films in countries, like the UK, which may extradite him to the States.

Now, however, Polanski's lawyers are hoping to have his arrest warrant ripped up, claiming 'judicial and prosecutorial misconduct' makes it invalid.

In legal papers filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, lawyers Chad Hummel and Brad Dalton claim a recent documentary - Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired - proves the case was mishandled.

'This case serves as a classic example of how our justice system can be abused, and defendants' rights trampled, by an unholy alliance between courts and criminal prosecutors,' the pair explain.

In the film, a former deputy district attorney for Los Angeles, David Wells, tells the cameras that he advised the superior court judge presiding over the case on how Polanski should be sentenced, despite the fact he wasn't personally assigned to the case.

Of this and other incidents, Hummel and Dalton claim 'judicial and prosecutorial misconduct... so distorted the legal process that the interests of justice can only be served with complete dismissal of the case'.