Judge rules Polanski must return

Polanski’s lawyers are likely to appeal against Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza’s ruling.

Lawyers for Polanski, 76, say he should be sentenced in absentia to time already served after pleading guilty in 1978 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

But prosecutors insist he must appear in a Los Angeles court and not be permitted to manipulate the justice system.

Polanski, arrested on a US warrant, spent more than 60 days in a Swiss jail before being transferred to house arrest at his Swiss holiday home on December 4.

A lawyer for Polanski’s victim had also urged Judge Espinoza to have the director sentenced in his absence.

In court documents, Polanski’s lawyers said the late Superior Court Judge Laurence Rittenband sentenced the director in 1978 to a diagnostic study at a California prison where he served 42 days.

Although the judge told lawyers that would be Polanski’s full sentence, he later indicated he was going to renege on the bargain and give him a harsher sentence at a scheduled hearing.

Polanski then fled to France and has been a fugitive ever since.

His wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, said yesterday that she “understands perfectly” that women were shocked by the case, but in the 1970s, when the crime took place, society viewed sex and drugs in a different light.

She told Elle magazine her husband, who has two young children, was a “marvellous” man.

“My husband never believed he was above the law. The proof is that he pleaded guilty,” Seigner said.