On this day: Roman Polanski flees

He was convicted and the initial expectation was for Judge Laurence J Rittenband who heard the case to give him a sentence of a 90-day psychiatric study. But Judge Rittenband subsequently decided to raise the sentence, at which point Polanski skipped bail and fled to Paris, where he was not at risk of extradition.

His reprieve lasted more than 30 years, but in September 2009, while en route to the Zurich Film Festival to collect a lifetime achievement award, he was arrested by Swiss police acting under US direction.

Prominent Hollywood figures including Woody Allen and Stephen Frears signed a petition calling on the US authorities to drop the charges, while Polanski spent the subsequent ten months under house arrest in his chalet in Gstaad. He was declared a free man last July, at the age of 77.

What he told the JC: “I have always lived as an exile, or should I say, a fugitive. From a very small child I was fugitive. But that’s my life — it’s hard for me to imagine any other state.”

See more from the JC archives here.