Word: rittenband
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...related to the drugging and rape of then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977. He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of having unlawful sex with a minor, but left the country in 1978 after being convinced that the judge in the case, the now deceased Laurence J. Rittenband, meant to backtrack on a plea agreement and send him back to prison. Polanski's most recent attempts to have the case dismissed faltered because of a chicken-and-egg legal loop. Polanski refused to appear in court in person for fear of arrest. Even if judges were sympathetic, most...
...Polanski sought to have the charges dropped after an HBO documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, detailed claims of judicial and prosecutorial wrongdoing during the time of the director's original arrest. In the film, the then Los Angeles deputy district attorney, David Wells, says he met with Rittenband without the presence of defense counsel to argue for more jail time for Polanski. Wells was not himself an attorney on the case but he was a lawyer working for one of the parties, the state of California. The California Code of Judicial Ethics forbids judges to engage in ex parte...
...based on a fraud. Then you could have a Swiss court decide whether or not the proceedings here in Los Angeles were so corrupt that they invalidate the conviction," says Harland Braun, a criminal defense attorney and former deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County. Braun, who worked in Rittenband's court as a young attorney, says the judge routinely held ex parte communications with state prosecutors. "He would talk to people without the other side there, which is completely illegal. Now I didn't do it because I knew someday the proverbial thing was going...
...interviews with Douglas Dalton, Polanski's lawyer, and Roger Gunson, Assistant District Attorney (described in the film as being "37, a Mormon, and the only member of the D.A.'s office who didn't have sex with an underage girl") aptly pin the blame on showboating judge, Laurence J, Rittenband. The film is a fascinating portrait of a artist whose life was stranger than any of his films, and whose sins were minor compared to those committed against...
...Polanski's defense attorney Douglas Dalton and the district attorney Roger Gunson detail the strange manner in which the case proceeded. Two court-appointed psychiatrists examined Polanski and determined that he was not a mentally deranged sex offender. Both attorneys and the victim argued for a plea bargain, but Rittenband, concerned with appearing soft on crime, sent Polanski to Chino State Penitentiary to undergo another 90-day evaluation period. On several occasions, Rittenband persuaded the attorneys to put on a show for the media, Dalton and Gunson say, arguing their sides even though the judge had already told them...