NEW POLANSKI APPEAL REVEALS MORE OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT BY JUDGE, DA’S

******BREAKING NEWS*****

March 18, 2010

By Blogonaut

As we reported in the last days of 2009 here, on December 21, 2009, the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles issued an opinion in response to fugitive and award winning director Roman Polanski’s request to dismiss the decades old statutory rape case against him, but strongly suggesting that prosecutors cut a deal with Polanski—or that the Lost Angeles Superior Court at least consider allowing the director to be sentenced without having to return to a Los Angeles court room so that procedurally the Superior Court could then look into and act on Polanski’s motion to dismiss for alleged serious misconduct by the now dead trial judge and several prosecutors.

Despite this firm “advice” by the California appeals court, earlier this year Judge Peter P. Espinoza of Los Angeles Superior Court has stubbornly refused requests by Mr. Polanski’s lawyers to dismiss his case or sentence him in absentia or to review claims of official misconduct in the prosecution.

Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last year when the director left his primary home in France (who has refused to extradite Polanski) to attend an award ceremony.

While Los Angeles prosecutors’ request to extradite Polanski back to a Los Angeles courtroom dragged on, Polanski has been released from a Swiss jail to remain under house arrest in his fabulous villa in uber luxurious Gstaad.

The Swiss had earlier announced that a decision on Polanski’s fate could be handed down any time, but after Judge Espinoza refused to implement any of the suggestion ways in which the matter might be resolved short of the director’s waiver of extradition, in February of this year the Swiss then announced that they were putting the matter on indefinite hold until the courts of appeal in California had a definitive ruling on whether the director could be sentenced without returning to the U.S.

The other shoe dropped today with a new Los Angeles appeals court filing by Polanski that brought with it disclosure of sealed testimony about secret dealings between high-ranking prosecutors and a now deceased judge in the director’s three decades old statutory rape plea.

According to today’s story in the New York Times:

“The 68-page petition asks the California Court of Appeals for the Second District, in Los Angeles, to act on an emergency basis. It argues, among other things, that the court should free Mr. Polanski by imposing a sentence for time served, or at least make the sealed testimony alleging wrongdoing available to Swiss authorities.”

Polanski’s allegations of wrongdoing involve highly improper contacts between the (now deceased) trial judge and two high ranking prosecutors with the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office, who have been identified as Stephen S. Trott, who was the chief deputy of the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, and Michael J. Montagna, a supervising deputy, according to testimony described in the petition and detailed in the Times story.

“One or both of the prosecutors met in the summer of 1977 with Judge Rittenband, who is now deceased, after [Roger Gunson, a deputy district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Polanski after his 1977 arrest] told them he intended to file an application to disqualify the judge because of misconduct, according to the petition’s account. The pair later told Mr. Gunson that the judge had “admitted all of the alleged misconduct,” according to the petition, but they denied Mr. Gunson permission to file the disqualification motion”, the times reports.

The appeals writ application today by lawyers for Polanski, described a series of sworn interviews in February and March during which Gunson described his severe misgivings about the conduct of the case, the Times reports.

Montagna told the Times he denies any improper contacts Gunson refused to comment, and Trott, who is now a senior federal appeals judge, declined comment.

In the meantime Polanski’s alleged victim in the case who is now an adult woman in her 40’s is adamant that the director has been punished enough and her attorney has joined in Polanski’s prior requests for a dismissal of the 33 year old charges.