Polanski lawyers split over voluntary return to US

Lawyers acting for Roman Polanski, who is currently in jail in Switzerland, have openly disagreed about the tactics they will use as the film director awaits extradition to the United States.

One member of the legal team appeared to indicate yesterday that Polanski might be willing to return to the US to face justice, but he was swiftly contradicted by one of his partners.

Georges Kiejman told France's Europe 1 radio yesterday that "if the [legal] procedure drags on, it is not impossible that Roman Polanski could choose to go and explain himself in the United States, where there are some arguments in his favour".

However Herve Temime, another lawyer acting for Polanski, dismissed this idea out of hand. "There has been no change in strategy at all," Temime told Reuters. "There were some comments by Mr Kiejman that were misunderstood. There is no disagreement at all."

Despite this, Polanski may prefer to return to the United States to seek an early resolution to his case, since the current tactic of dragging out the legal process for as long as possible, could see the 76-year-old remaining in a Swiss jail for years.

As Alexander Cockburn noted recently in The First Post, in 1978 Polanski's lawyers had plea-bargained a remarkably lenient sentence for the director, one that would be impossible to imagine in the modern climate.

"Is it possible that today lawyers for a 44-year-old film director would be able to negotiate 45 days in jail on charges of rape of a 13-year-old girl, admitting to vaginal, anal and oral penetrations after feeding the young woman champagne and Quaaludes?" Cockburn asked.

Were Polanski's modern-day lawyers able to revive such a settlement, then it is understandable that the option of facing an American court would hold relatively little fear for Polanski.

However, as Cockburn wrote, the director had jumped bail as he feared that Superior Court Judge Lawrence Rittenband would throw the plea-bargain out of court and order that he return to prison for another 45 days. Polanski feared that back in jail he would become a target for the inmates there and, as a self-confessed child-molester, "could be raped or might not even leave the prison alive."

However, with public opinion in America overwhelmingly against him, Polanski would do well to think twice before choosing to face the music Stateside.