Polanski was arrested and plead guilty to raping 13-year-old Samantha Gailey in 1977. In 2014, the U.S. requested that he be extradited from Krakow, but they were denied in 2015. Earlier in 2016, conservative Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced that he would file an appeal in Poland’s Supreme Court against that ruling, telling the state radio, “If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I’m sure he’d have been deported from any country to the U.S. a long time ago.”
The Daily Mail reports that Ziobro’s extradition attempt was rejected on Tuesday, ending any attempts from U.S. officials to take Polanski from Poland:
The Supreme Court ‘is dismissing the appeal,’ said Judge Michal Laskowski, definitively ending Poland’s part in the 1977 case.
Laskowski stressed that the Warsaw court’s role was not to rule on the merits of the case but rather to make sure due process had been followed by the lower court.
‘We did not find a flagrant violation of the law,’ he said alongside his two fellow judges.
Polanski was not in attendance when the decision was announced but his lawyer Jerzy Stachowicz texted him the news. Stachowicz told reporters, “We’re very happy.”
