The fugitive director is continuing to use the HBO documentary that comically distorted the facts of his case as grounds that his child-sex conviction be set aside. A new motion was filed in LA yesterday.  I don’t care about Polanski personally, but the media coverage of the case continues to gloss over what exactly the director did and the crazy stuff in the documentary.

The LAT says he was accused of “unlawful sex with a minor”; the NYT says it was “statutory rape.” That’s the impression you get if you watch Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, the HBO doc. In reality, Polanski doped the girl with liquor and a Quaalude, had sex with her, and then anally raped her.

The girl, as the papers describe in detail, has forgiven Polanski, and again I personally don’t care what happens to him. But the affair remains a case study in how the bad journalism of that documentary begets more bad journalism.

The LAT is particularly credulous with Polanksi’s attorneys’ claims:

The request to dismiss the charge, which took court officials and prosecutors by surprise, is based on revelations in a documentary broadcast in June on HBO. The film, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” portrayed the legal proceeding as hopelessly tainted by backroom dealings between a vindictive judge and a deputy district attorney meddling in his colleagues’ case.

Actually, the film tried to smear the judge with extralegal issues and raised one or two actual, if minor, legal points, one notably involving interactions between the original judge in the case and one of the prosecutors. The prosecutor, David Wells, has said the communications were routine. In any case, it’s hard to see how they “hopelessly tainted” a case that featured a 13-year-old girl telling police, “He stuck his penis in my butt.”

Further, the LAT story presents the issue of whether Polanski needed to appear in court (and thus be taken into custody) this way, emphasis added:

Whether Polanski must appear in court to ask for the dismissal appeared to be in dispute. As a fugitive, he would be arrested upon arriving on U.S. soil. A court spokesman said that in past attempts to settle the case — including the failed 1997 negotiation — Polanski’s presence in Los Angeles was required.

“It has been the court’s position consistently for several years that in order to pursue dismissal, or sentencing, Mr. Polanski must personally appear,” court spokesman Allan Parachini said in an e-mail.

The district attorney’s office agreed. “We believe that if he is a party to the action, he should be here,” Gibbons said.

But Polanski’s lawyers suggested in court papers that the judge could toss the charge on his own initiative without ever hearing from Polanski.

“In dispute” doesn’t seem to me to be the bon mot for a situation in which both a court and a prosecutor’s office have taken a position. The Polanski attorneys can wish that a judge will change that position, but that doesn’t make the matter “in dispute.”

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Previously in Hitsville:

Roman Polanski: The Ick Factor
The Polanski whitewash continues
P.S. on ‘The Polanski whitewash’