Roman Polanski's lawyer: Expulsion 'reflects poorly' on academy; didn't give Oscar winner a hearing
The organization removed the two for violating its code of conduct. Alicia Powell reports.
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Director Roman Polanski poses with an award he received for his Oscar-winning movie ‘The Pianist’ during the Polish Film Awards in Warsaw, Poland, March 26, 2018.(Photo: Stach Leszczynski, EPA-EFE)
Roman Polanski’s expulsion from the motion-picture academy that awarded him an Oscar 15 years ago was mishandled, says the lawyer who represents the fugitive in his sex-crime case in Los Angeles.
Lawyer Harland Braun said the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ own rules should have allowed for Polanski to make his case against expulsion, and he was preparing to do so when the academy acted Tuesday night.
“We suspected something might be happening, and we were totally prepared, I’ve got all the documents, I could have presented them in less than an hour,” Braun told USA TODAY in a phone interview from Boston.
“The rules provide that (targets) have an opportunity to present their side and I was looking forward to presenting (Polanski’s) side,” he said. “It reflects very poorly on the academy that they would just do this” before hearing from the 84-year-old filmmaker.
The academy’s response is that the Board of Governors has the right to take action on any matter if it relates to a member’s status and standards of conduct, said Teni Melidonian, spokeswoman for the academy.
“Per the academy’s bylaws, Article 10, Section 3: Any member of the academy may be suspended or expelled for cause by the Board of Governors. Expulsion or suspension as herein provided for shall require the affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of all the Governors.”
The academy’s original statement did not elaborate on why it waited until 2018 to act against Polanski when his criminal case dates to 1978.
Director Roman Polanski on May 27, 2017, left, and Polanski at a Santa Monica, Calif., courthouse on Aug. 8, 1977. (Photo: AP)
Polanski received the best-director award for The Pianist in 2003, nearly three decades after pleading guilty to sex with a 13-year-old girl and then fleeing the country.
Melidonian confirmed to USA TODAY his Oscar would not be taken away.
Braun represents Polanski in his long-running, and so far unsuccessful, effort to get the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office to drop its case to extradite Polanski from France, where he mostly lives, to Los Angeles to serve the few months remaining on his sentence in the 40-year-old statutory rape case, and pay a price for fleeing California justice for so many decades.
Despite the pleas of Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, now 54, that the case be dropped — she says she long ago forgave Polanski — the most recent hearing in the case was bad news for Polanski: He remains a fugitive, unable to return to the U.S. without being jailed for rape and fleeing justice, under a ruling by Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon in August 2017.
Braun said Polanski has been mistreated by the criminal justice system in California, and that multiple inquiries in Europe stemming from the extradition proceedings have confirmed that. He said he was preparing to tell that to the academy when it acted.
Samantha Geimer faces the media at Los Angeles Superior Court after a hearing on the Roman Polanski case on June 9, 2017. (Photo: Damian Dovarganes, AP)
The Polanski case dates from 1977 when Polanski had sex with Geimer, then 13, after giving her champagne and a sedative, which is statutory rape. He was arrested, spent time in jail, then pleaded guilty in a plea bargain. He fled the country in 1978 after becoming convinced the judge in the case, now deceased, planned to sentence him to a lengthy prison term in contravention of his plea agreement.
Ever since, he’s been unable to return to the U.S., not even to collect his Oscar or to appear at the Academy Awards ceremonies when he was nominated for best director in 1981 for Tess. (He also was nominated for Chinatown in 1975, for Rosemary’s Baby in 1969, and for a foreign language film, Knife in the Water, in 1964.)
In a rare interview, Polanski addressed his criminal case with The Hollywood Reporter while promoting his latest movie, Based on a True Story, in Zurich in October.
“As far as what I did: It’s over. I pleaded guilty,” said Polanski. “I went to jail. I came back to the United States to do it, people forget about that, or don’t even know. I then was locked up here (in Zurich for nearly a year during extradition proceedings). So in the sum, I did about four or five times more than what was promised to me” in his original plea agreement.
Contributing: Andrea Mandell
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