Documentary gives Polanski rape case get-out hope

Roman Polanski (pictured in 1977 outside court) has asked the Los Angeles district attorney's office to look into claims made in a new documentary that a prosecutor tried illegally to influence the judge in his rape trial 30 years ago. The acclaimed director, whose films include Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, fled America on the eve of being sentenced for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl and has been a US fugitive ever since.

In the documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, made by Marina Zenovich, a former prosecutor named David Wells admits advising Judge Laurence Rittenband to send Polanski to prison for a psychiatric review. Wells, who was not involved in the trial, is also said to have attempted to influence the judge before sentencing. Apparently seeking to reinforce the idea that Polanski had a taste for young girls, Wells showed Rittenband a photograph taken of Polanski with two young girls in Germany, saying: "Look here. He's flipping you off."

The evidence against Polanski offered at the time was compelling. Prosecutors claimed that the director had borrowed fellow actor Jack Nicholson's Los Angeles home in March 1977 as a location for a photoshoot with 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. After taking pictures of her naked, Polanski allegedly gave her champagne and sedatives before having sex with her. (Continued below)

Polanski's lawyer Douglas Dalton now believes the documentary's revelation about Wells could be sufficient to have the case struck off on the basis that Wells's interaction with Rittenband, who died in 1993, violated not just Californian law but standard legal ethics. Says Dalton: "There could be a motion to dismiss based on prosecutorial misconduct."

He added that Polanski wanted to investigate further the extent of the pair's contact and whether anybody else was aware of it. For his part, Wells denies his contact with the judge had been improper, arguing that it occurred in open court during routine discussions of cases. He says: "I didn't tell him to do it or that he should do it. I just told him what his options were."

Charles Whitebread, a law professor at the University of Southern California, says it would be unusual for a judge to reopen such a case. But Polanski, now 74, has written an email to the New York Times saying he is "not ruling anything out", adding: "I believe that closure of that entire matter is long overdue."