MUMBAI: Lawyers of Roman Polanski have filed an appeal in a California appeals court saying that the 33-year-old sex case and its lengthy delays have been an assault on the state‘s judicial system.

The court should order an investigation of judicial misconduct in Polanski‘s original case and the filmmaker should not have to pay for it, they contended. The 76-year-old has mounting debts and has no way to earn a living while in custody, his attorneys observed.

The defense made their latest plea in response to arguments from prosecutors who say Polanski must return from Europe to face sentencing. The defense argued that the director should be sentenced in absentia to time served. The papers were filed in the California 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Polanski was arrested six months ago on a fugitive warrant from Los Angeles and is under house arrest in Switzerland.
He had served part of a 90-day period in prison ordered by the judge for a "diagnostic study." His departure was prompted by the judge‘s private statements that he planned to renege on the agreement that the study would be Polanski‘s full sentence, according to documents filed in the case.

The original prosecutor in the case recently gave closed door testimony to that effect, the lawyers have said.

Defense lawyers Chad Hummel and Bart Dalton said that the misconduct allegations should not be buried just because the trial judge is dead and some participants are no longer in the district attorney‘s office.

Polanski, who has directed films like The Pianist and Chinatown fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.