Roman Polanski Faces Extradition to LA

Zurich, Switzerland (myFOXla.com) - Oscar-winning movie director Roman Polanski, who was arrested Saturday in Switzerland, will fight efforts to extradite him to Los Angeles in connection with the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl 32 years ago, his Paris-based attorney said today.

Polanski, who is now 76, pleaded guilty in 1977 to having unlawful sex, but fled to France because he was afraid Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband was going to reject a deal to sentence him to time served, and instead send him to prison for 50 years.

In an interview on "Good Morning America," attorney Herve Temime said he would also be trying to get the Oscar-winning director freed from a Swiss jail.

"He wants to struggle," Temime said. "It could be possible for us to obtain his freedom."

Temime said he was "working on the file, and we will see, but I think that it will be possible for the Swiss judge to ... make Mr. Polanski free as soon as possible."

The Oscar-winning director of "The Pianist," "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby," was arrested Saturday when he arrived in Zurich to attend a film festival, where he was to have received a lifetime achievement award.

When prosecutors heard he would be traveling from France to Switzerland, they worked with U.S. and Swiss authorities to have him arrested on a warrant that had first been issued in 1978, said Sandi Gibbons of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

"This has been sort of an epic situation, obviously very L.A., celebrity defendant, a high profile," said District Attorney Steve Cooley. "He's has been fighting using surrogates for some time. We're just happy that the matter gets resolved."

Cooley would not say what sentence he would recommend.

"The extradition process will begin. It can be relatively quick or can take some time if (Polanski) wants to fight extradition," Cooley said.

Temime called Polanski's arrest "shocking," noting that Polanski has a ski chalet in Switzerland that he has frequently visited in the past without trouble.

Authorities in France and Poland expressed outrage at the arrest, and his victim, Samantha Geimer, who is now 44, married and living in Hawaii, has previously said she wished the matter would be dropped.

Frederic Mitterand, French culture minister, expressed outrage at the arrest, saying in a radio interview, "I strongly regret that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them."

Mitterand said he and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski sent letters to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing concern about the situation.

But attorney Laurie Levenson said Polanski's problems are of his own making.

"The big problem is Roman Polanski took off," she told ABC7. "He became a fugitive. At that point, what the prosecutors would say, he flaunted justice."

In 1977, when Polanski was 44, he lured Geimer, who was then 13, to actor Jack Nicholson's home on Mulholland Drive, saying he wanted to take photographs of her for a magazine. During the shoot, he gave her champagne and part of a Quaalude and forced her to have sex. After spending 42 days in a prison hospital ward for a mental evaluation, a deal was worked out for him to plead guilty and be sentenced to time served.

Geimer has said that although the sex was not consensual, she wants the matter dropped.

"He should never have been put in a position that led him to flee," she wrote in 2003. "He should have received a sentence of time served 25 years ago, just as we all agreed."

Polanski had been trying to get his Los Angeles County arrest warrant dismissed. In July, lawyers for Polanski appealed Los Angeles Superior Court Peter Espinoza's denial of his petition to have the charge dropped.

Espinoza ruled on May 7 that Polanski

must personally appear if he wants to argue that there was prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the handling of his case.

Polanski has lived a turbulent life, escaping from the Nazis in Poland when he was a child in the 1940s, and becoming an acclaimed film director with the 1968 release of "Rosemary's Baby."

In 1969, his wife, actress Sharon Tate, was butchered along with four others by members of Charles Manson's "family" in Benedict Canyon, when she was eight months pregnant.

In 1974, "Chinatown" was nominated for 11 Academy Awards.

In 1977, he was arrested for raping a minor, and the next year he fled to France, where he remarried, had two children and continued to make movies.

In 2003, he won the Oscar for best director for "The Pianist," which was based in part on his life under the Nazis in Poland.

Speaking to Diane Sawyer of ABC after "The Pianist" was released, Polanski said of his sexual encounter with a minor, "I think at the time I had a hard time to persuade myself that it was wrong because I don't think anybody was hurt. Later on I realized that I was too close to the forest to see the trees."

Cooley said justice still needs to be served.

"Until you're ultimately sentenced in a court of law, there is no justice, so there will be some form of justice, maybe not perfect justice, some form of justice now that he's been apprehended," Cooley said