Legal News

Polanski Goes Big; Hires High-Profile, Connected U.S. Lawyer

By Ashby Jones

So if Roman Polanski ultimately winds up doing time in the U.S. for having sex with a 13-year-old-girl, it won’t be without a fight lodged by a U.S. lawyer used to big-stage cases.

That much was made clear on Tuesday when the jailed film director hired Steptoe & Johnson’s Reid Weingarten, a veteran D.C. defense lawyer and, as it just so happens, a friend of AG Eric Holder. The move, writes the NYT, indicates that Polanski will likely press hard on the political front. Click here for the story, from the NYT; here for other LB posts on the Polanski situation.

Writes the NYT, on Weingarten’s possible strategy:

Mr. Weingarten is expected to mount a legal effort to block Mr. Polanski's extradition before the issue works its way through the Swiss legal system, according to people who were briefed on Mr. Weingarten's involvement, but spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

A critical step will most likely be a move to stop the extradition before United States authorities send the required documents to Switzerland. Mr. Polanski's team may do so by arguing either that his crime does not qualify for extradition, because he was originally to have been sentenced to less than a year in prison, or that he has already effectively served his sentence, during a 42-day psychiatric evaluation.

Weingarten has been out of the limelight for a few years, but back in the heady Enron days, it seemed you couldn’t throw a stone across a newsroom without hitting a reporter working on a story about him. He successfully represented former agriculture secretary Mike Espy, former Tyco GC Mark Belnick and former Teamsters president Ron Carey. He helped negotiate a plea bargain for former Enron chief accounting officer Richard Causey.

He’s had losses, too. He repped former Worldcom head Bernie Ebbers, who was convicted of fraud counts and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2005. Weingarten also repped Franklin Brown, the former chief counsel of Rite Aid, who was convicted on conspiracy and other charges.

For more on Weingarten, click here for a NYT profile from 2005; here for a 2002 profile in Business Week; here for a clip of an interview with Charlie Rose in 2005.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 30, 2009 (boomark / email).