LOS ANGELES—Roman Polanski boarded a red-eye out of the United States in January 1978, just months after he had agreed to a plea deal to end a case in which he was accused of raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl.

His departure sparked a debate that would stretch over decades — left to be hashed out in books, documentaries, news articles and duelling court motions as Polanski refused to return from France.

Was he a sex offender skipping town to avoid facing justice? Or was he a victim of a corrupt judicial system that wanted to make an example of an acclaimed film director?

Now the 81-year-old Polanski is asking a court to publicly evaluate the long-standing legal saga and his allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. Led by a team that includes legendary attorney Alan Dershowitz, Polanski filed a motion for an evidentiary hearing this week with hopes of having all charges dismissed.

According to court documents, Polanski contends that the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office withheld facts from Swiss and Polish authorities during extradition efforts that would have revealed that the filmmaker had already served his punishment.

If a judge agrees to the request at a January court date, the hearing could shed light on a case that divided the entertainment industry.

The district attorney’s office and the Superior Court declined to comment.

The criminal case dates to spring 1977, when Polanski picked up Samantha Gailey for a purported photo shoot he had been assigned by a Paris fashion magazine. He was 43.

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The two arrived at Jack Nicholson’s house on Mulholland Drive, where Samantha was plied with champagne and part of a Quaalude pill. The junior high student would later testify that Polanski insisted she be photographed without clothes and asked her repeatedly to join him in the hot tub before forcing her to have sex. The testimony led to a grand jury indictment.

The Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown director agreed to a plea deal, something prosecutors wanted in order to save the victim from testifying at trial. The terms of the deal called for Polanski to plead guilty to unlawful intercourse with a minor and for Judge Laurence Rittenband to determine the sentence.

Polanski was sent to the state prison in Chino for a 90-day “diagnostic evaluation” that Rittenband said would help the court “reach a fair and just decision” on the filmmaker’s punishment. But Polanski was released after 42 days, and prison officials advised the judge that test results showed his sentence should not include additional incarceration. Rittenband, however, said he planned to send the filmmaker back to prison for 48 more days, which prompted Polanski to discreetly hop on a flight out of Los Angeles.

In 1997, Polanski hoped to strike a deal with the district attorney’s office to resolve his case. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler oversaw the proceedings and said that if Polanski returned to Los Angeles, he would not serve any additional time in custody, according to court documents filed by the defence.

Negotiations, however, eventually fell flat.

Allegations of misconduct in Polanski’s case resurfaced in 2008 with the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and with paperwork filed by Polanski with the L.A. court seeking dismissal of his case.