Late last night I wrote the following with regard to using Marina Zenovich’s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired as evidence of wrong-doing in the 1978 Polanski case:
I’m sorry, but as well-done as I believe Zenovich’s documentary to be, using the narrative of a movie as part of an ongoing 31-year-old legal debate just doesn’t sit well with me. Sure, use the same factual evidence, but don’t point to the movie itself, it reeks of ease of availability and a lack of complete understanding of the situation at hand. It’s Cole Trickle learning how to drive stock cars from ESPN… It opens our eyes to things we most likely didn’t know but the important details must be learned on the battle field. Nobody passes on the outside in turn four!
Today, a good example of why I made the above statement is revealed in a piece by former Los Angeles District Attorney Marcia Clark at The Daily Beast with the following major revelation from former prosecutor, David Wells:
“I lied,” Wells told me yesterday, referring to his comments in the movie that he told [Judge Rittenband] how he could renege on a plea bargain agreement and send Polanski back to jail after he had been released from a 42-day psychiatric evaluation — the heart of Polanski’s claims of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. “I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. The director of the documentary told me it would never air in the States. I thought it made a better story if I said I’d told the judge what to do.”
On top of this, Wells was the one that supplied Rittenband with pictures of Polanski reveling at Oktoberfest. The same photos that prompted the judge in 1977 to reconsider the plea bargain.
Clark says law enforcement sources confirm that the strident actions of Polanski’s own lawyers — prompted by Wells’ now-recanted statements in the movie — led to his arrest this weekend.
I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t look good. Maybe next time don’t build your case on a movie and do a little research first.
