O.J. Simpson Prosecutor Marcia Clark Bolsters Case Against Polanski
After initial protests over the what some see as the unfairness of the arrest last week of fugitive film director Roman Polanski in a decades-old California sexual abuse case concerning a 13-year-old girl, additional observers are now weighing in on the side of the prosecution.
Columnist Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times says the director’s defenders have lost sight of the true victim in the case, detailing the teen’s grand jury testimony. And the newspaper reports in a subsequent article that a retired prosecutor now says he lied in a documentary that Polanski supporters have cited in his defense.
Lawyers for Polanski have sought–so far, unsuccessfully–to have his conviction dismissed based on alleged prosecutorial misconduct described in the 2008 documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. After entering into a plea bargain, Polanski fled the United States before he was sentenced.
But Marcia Clark, the former assistant Los Angeles district attorney who prosecuted the O.J. Simpson murder case, broke the news in a Daily Beast post that a lawyer who claimed in the documentary to have improperly tried to influence a judge concerning Polanski’s sentence has now recanted, recounts the Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
On camera, former Los Angeles County prosecutor David Wells says he intervened in the Polanski case by telling the judge how he could sentence the director to prison. But in fact, Wells now says, he lied in the documentary about his claimed contact with the judge, reports the Los Angeles Times.
“That was not true,” the 71-year-old Wells told the Times today. “I like to speak of it as an inept statement, but the reality is that it was a lie.”
He said he had earlier recanted to prosecutors and apologized, and says he made up the story for the documentary because he never expected it to be shown in the United States.
Additional coverage:
ABAJournal.com (2008): “Roman Polanski Documentary Puts New Spin on Child Sex Crime”
ABAJournal.com: “Polanski Wins Calif. Appellate Review of Bias Claim re Child-Rape Case”
New York Times: “For Studios, Polanski’s Box Office Is the Key”
Smoking Gun: “Roman Polanski Plea Transcript”
Post Partisan (Washington Post): “Woody Allen on Roman Polanski? Really?”
