Polanski faces harsher U.S. justice system than 1977

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - If Los Angeles prosecutors succeed in extraditing Roman Polanski from Switzerland for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, the film director faces a justice system that may treat his crime more severely than 30 years ago.

When Polanski pleaded guilty for the 1977 crime, in which he also was accused of plying the girl with champagne and sedatives, an agreement with prosecutors called for him to be sentenced to the 42 days he already had served in jail.

But attitudes toward sex crimes have hardened in the United States in the intervening years, and public opinion today does not appear to be on Polanski's side.

"He might never see the light of day if he was brought to court today, but at the time, attitudes were a little more relaxed," said Stan Goldman, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

No U.S. official has publicly supported the Oscar-winning director of films including "The Pianist" and "Chinatown." Editorials in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times this week called for Polanski to be brought to California to face justice.

U.S. movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and director Martin Scorsese have defended Polanski but many in Hollywood so far have been reluctant to speak out on his behalf.

In France, where some officials initially were quick to criticize the United States over Polanski's arrest in Switzerland over the weekend, politicians have since softened their stance.

Polanski's decision to flee California was motivated by his fear that the judge in the case at the time would overlook his plea deal with prosecutors and send him to prison for 50 years. It is unlikely a deal with a sentence as lenient as the one he was offered three decades ago would be given today, legal experts said.

ORIGINAL RAPE CHARGE DROPPED

Polanski originally was charged with rape but that was dropped in the plea deal, partly because the victim was reluctant to testify at trial.

If he ultimately is sent back to Los Angeles, it is unclear how long a sentence he might receive because of how much time has passed since his 1977 plea, one judicial source said.

A number of U.S. states including Louisiana and South Carolina -- but not California -- sought in recent years to extend the death penalty to convicted child rapists. But the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 invalidated those state laws in a 5-4 decision.

In his dissenting opinion in that case, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito suggested that the state laws showed a "strong new evolutionary line" to increase penalties for the crime, and the high court was wrong to bar application of the death penalty to child rapists.

Every U.S. state has a sex offender registry, and most, including California, make these registries publicly available online. This has led to protests outside the homes of some convicted sex offenders.

One factor behind harsher penalties for such crimes against children has been high-profile cases such as the 1994 rape and murder of a 7-year-old New Jersey girl by a man previously convicted of a sex crime.

"Once it's put in front of you, it's very hard to oppose harsher punishment for the rape of a child," said Tania Tetlow, a law professor at Tulane University in New Orleans.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Will Dunham)