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Sharon Tate (right) and Roman Polanski in London 1968. | Photo by Bill Ray from Sharon Tate fan Lily Laurent (CC0 1.0)
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Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Tuesday that his office believes grand jury transcripts of a former prosecutor’s testimony should be unsealed in the case of famed film director Roman Polanski, who fled from the United States in the late 1970s during an unlawful sexual intercourse case involving a 13-year-old girl.
“This case has been described by the courts as `one of the longest- running sagas in California criminal justice history,”‘ the county’s top prosecutor said in a statement. “For years, this office has fought the release of information that the victim and public have a right to know.”
Gascón said his office has “determined it to be in the interest of justice to agree to the unsealing of these transcripts” of former Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson’s closed-door testimony based on “careful consideration of the victim’s wishes, the unique and extraordinary circumstances that led to his conditional exam and my commitment to transparency and accountability for all in the justice system.”
Defense attorney Harland Braun said in 2017 that he believes the transcript would confirm a plea deal negotiated in 1978 calling for Polanski to be sentenced to time already served behind bars.
Braun maintained then that Polanski has already served more than enough time, including time he spent at a state prison in Chino in the late 1970s for a pre-sentencing diagnostic examination and also in jail and under house arrest in Switzerland in 2009 as Swiss authorities considered an extradition request.
In June 2017, the victim appeared in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to ask that the drawn-out criminal case against the fugitive Oscar-winning director come to an end.
“… I would implore you to consider taking action which can finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Samantha Geimer told then-Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon.
The judge denied that request a little over two months later.
In his August 2017 ruling, Gordon wrote that Geimer’s testimony was “dramatic evidence of the long-lasting and traumatic effect these crimes, and defendant’s refusal to obey court orders and appear for sentencing, is having on her life.”
The judge cited a 1976 California appellate court panel’s ruling in noting that “a court may not dismiss a case merely because it would be in the victim’s best interest.”
Polanski — an 88-year-old director, writer and producer who won an Oscar in 2002 for “The Pianist” — fled to his native France in 1978 before his sentencing. Southern California authorities tried for years to bring him back to America.
