The last time we reported on Roman Polanski’s case, Samantha Geimer and her legal team had joined Polanski’s in a unified attempt to get the charges dropped, and Swiss authorities were refusing to extradite the director as appeals were still running their way through the courts. Now, the prosecution is unwilling to drop the charges on the basis that it would “fundamentally alter the way in which crimes are prosecuted.”
In a new appeal filed with California Second District Court of Appeal, the Los Angeles-based attorneys argued that “if victims were parties to criminal cases, cases could be dropped either through intimidation, coercion or public pressure.” This is despite the fact that Geimer has fought to have them dropped for some time now, citing “that renewed interest of the case and media coverage has led to her being repeatedly victimized.” Whether or not you believe that the case against Polanski should be dropped, the amount of media attention it has gathered really can’t be argued. Whether or not it warrants dropping the case, well, that’s one, it appears, for the courts to decide.
Polanski, whose last film was the tiresome and often silly “The Ghost Writer,” is now working on an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s “Gods of Carnage” — a dark comedy that “tells the story of two sets of parents brought together by an altercation between their respective children.” The likelihood of Polanski himself directing it? Not any time soon, but there’s no reason he couldn’t try to sell it a studio for someone else to direct. After all, his legal bills are piling up.