He then fled the United States, fearing a plea bargain with prosecutors would be overruled and that he would get a lengthy prison term. Gordon, in Los Angeles, on Friday also rejected a request by Polanski’s attorney, Harland Braun, to unseal testimony about the 1977 plea deal. Two recent bids by the United States to extradite Polanski, from Switzerland and Poland, have failed. In 2003, he won an Oscar for directing the Holocaust film The Pianist but did not travel to the United States to collect it. “This case is 40 years old, with an 84-year-old defendant and a 50-year-old victim requesting that the matter be resolved ...

Source: The Guardian August 19, 2017 00:22 UTC