Samantha Geimer - The Girl - A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski

In order to get the prosecution to accept the plea bargain, Larry had agreed to read a statement to the judge urging the variation from Van de Kamp’s newly articulated plea agreement rules. He read his letter, excerpted here, to Judge Rittenband in open court.

…My primary concern is the present and future well-being of this girl and her family. Up to this point the identity of my clients has been protected from public disclosure evincing a laudable exercise of restraint by the press. Your Honor has been sensitive to my clients’ right to privacy and has protected and will protect those rights consistent with Article I, section 1 of California’s Constitution, and the public policy expressed by the Legislature in its various enactments in protection of juveniles. Of course, if there were a trial in this case, the anonymity of my clients would be at an end.

In all cases, balances have to be struck. In this case, the balance that has to be affected is between the interests of society as represented by the District Attorney, the defendant, and my clients.

In evaluating my clients’ interests, I am mindful that they, and more particularly she, have been harmed as the victim of unlawful acts committed by the defendant. By a trial, the integrity of the charges they preferred would have been vindicated, even though the personal cost to them would be substantial. My view, based upon advice from experts, and the view of the girl’s parents, is that such a trial may cause serious damage to her. Long before I had met any other attorney in this case, my clients informed me that their goal in pressing the charges did not include seeking the incarceration of the defendant, but rather, the admission by him of wrongdoing and commencement by him, under the supervision of the court, of a program to ensure complete rehabilitation. The plea of guilty by the defendant is contrition sufficient for my clients to believe that goal may be achievable. The plea in this case has not changed the original goals and I commend them to Your Honor for consideration.

…Whatever harm has come to her as a victim would be exacerbated in the extreme if this case went to trial. The reliving of the sorry events with their delicate content, through the vehicle of direct and cross-examination in this courtroom packed with strangers would be a challenge to the emotional well-being of any person. The potential for harm is even greater to one of tender years. In the ordinary case, this consideration should cause concern; however, this is not the ordinary case. Although Your Honor has and would diligently protect the decorum of the courtroom, the intense national and international attention generated by this case has packed the corridors leading to and from the courtroom with a mass of media technicians flashing and prodding their equipment to feed an unseemly curiosity. A member of the media last Friday in anticipation said this case “promised to be one of the most sensational Hollywood trials…” This is not the place for a recovering young girl.

The public disclosure of her identity in such a charged atmosphere can only seriously harm her. Relationships with friends and indeed her family would never be the same. A stigma would attach to her for a lifetime. Justice is not made of such stuff….

Judge Rittenband accepted the plea. It wasn’t a perfect solution—Polanski “walked” on the most serious charges—but it was a win for me.

At the end of the proceedings Polanski stood for the traditional on-the-record plea, admitting his guilt to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. Polanski knew the questions that were coming and Gunson knew the answers.

“I had intercourse with a female person, not my wife, who was under eighteen years of age,” Roman said.

“How old did you think the girl was?”

“I understood she was thirteen.”

It was that simple. That’s how this sordid affair should have ended.

But the judge wasn’t through with it yet, not by a long shot.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (UPI): Film director Roman Polanski pleaded guilty Monday to “Unlawful sexual intercourse” with a 13-year-old girl and was ordered to undergo psychiatric examination to determine whether he should be committed to a hospital as a “mentally disordered sex offender.”

Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband withheld sentencing pending a probation report on the 43-year-old former husband of murdered actress Sharon Tate and maker of such movies as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown.”…

The district attorney’s office agreed, in return for the guilty plea, to drop five other more serious counts in the indictment involving the alleged drugging and raping of the unidentified girl March 10 at the home of actor Jack Nicholson, who was away at the time….

… District Attorney John Van De Kamp said the “plea bargaining arrangement was reached largely at the urging of the girl’s family that she be spared the ordeal of appearing on the witness stand at a sensational trial.”

In California, whenever a defendant in a felony case is convicted of a crime, whether it’s for a plea bargain or a jury verdict, a probation report is prepared. The report includes a number of different elements, among them a description of the circumstances of the crime; the person’s family and work history; a psychological evaluation; and a recommended sentence. The idea is to help the judge decide a proper sentence for the defendant.

But the probation report does not dictate what a judge must do—and in this case, it was hard to predict what Judge Rittenband would do one day to the next, or one ruling to the next. His decisions and reactions depended on any number of things, and looking back it seems they mostly had to do with his ego. At some point, this unpredictability turned into something that looked more like instability.

One thing was clear: the judge wasn’t much interested in me. For him, this case was all about power and publicity, and Mom and I were inconsequential nuisances. He wasn’t exactly shy about revealing his true feelings for us. At one memorable hearing, with the defense floating the theory that my mother had foisted me off on Polanski to advance her own career, he said, “What do we have here, a mother/daughter hooker team?”

Still, it seemed everyone was in agreement. My mother, father, Larry, and I agreed—and still do with the probation report’s final recommendation, that Polanski’s sentence be probation and nothing more. But here’s where things got even trickier with Judge Rittenband, who seemed to be having a grand old time at the center of the media spotlight.

The judge summoned Larry, Gunson, and Dalton to his office and said it would reflect poorly on him—Judge Rittenband—if he were to let Roman off without so much as a day in jail. Public scrutiny of this case had simply been too great, and Rittenband risked looking like a wuss if Polanski, who had just signed on to do a film in Bora-Bora with Dino De Laurentiis, got only probation.

Larry told us there had been hallway murmuring at the courthouse that the judge had solicited opinions and recommendations of reporters, trying to gauge how the media would react to one decision or another and how he, the judge, would be viewed. No one would come out and openly accuse the judge of such improprieties, but now here he was flatly admitting he was weighing public and press opinion in his sentencing decision. Incredible.

This is the convoluted solution he arrived at: He would send Polanski to Chino State Prison for ninety days, for something called a “diagnostic study.” Both Gunson and Dalton protested. Gunson pointed out to the judge that under the law, a study of this kind could not be used as punishment, and Dalton said that this step went against everything the judge had indicated he would do. Dalton also said that his client was about to embark on a new film project that would last about a year.