Back around Halloween we once again narrowly missed a chance to drag confessed pedophile and child rapist Roman Polanski back to the United States to face justice for his monstrous crimes when Poland refused to honor our requests. That was undoubtedly a frustrating experience for many observers, but it won’t hold a candle to how most of us will feel if celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz has his way. He is seeking to throw the case out entirely so that the known sex offender can freely travel back and forth to America.

Alan M. Dershowitz, a lawyer whose celebrity clients have included the heiress Patty Hearst and the hacker Julian Assange, is seeking to lead what could be the final effort to end the legal case against the film director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States before final sentencing on a statutory rape charge in 1978. In connection with a Los Angeles County Superior Court filing on Monday, Mr. Dershowitz, who is based in Massachusetts, is asking permission to represent Mr. Polanski in California. The filing charged prosecutors with providing false information to support a recent attempt to have Mr. Polanski extradited from Poland. It also demanded a hearing aimed at closing his case, based partly on fresh testimony that a Superior Court judge, in 2009, had unethically prejudged issues related to Mr. Polanski’s prosecution, and had a secret plan to jail him at least briefly, even while limiting his actual sentence to time served.

Time served? He wants to have the case resolved and say that Polanski should have a total penalty of time served? What time did he serve? For the record, Polanski underwent 42 days of psychiatric evaluation at Chino, a penal institution in California’s posh San Bernadino County which barely qualifies as a prison since it features dormitory style living “without secure perimeters.” Is there actually some judge or jury in the country that would find this an appropriate penalty, particularly when it was followed up by a flight from justice and nearly four decades living in French chateaus and being feted by Hollywood royalty?

Let us recall that while many of Polanski’s tinsel town supporters like to refer to his crimes as statutory rape, that is hardly what happened. The pervert admitted to drugging, raping and sodomizing a thirteen year old child. It was not an accident or a misunderstanding of any sort. It was an intentional, premeditated, evil assault on a little girl which even Polanski himself did not deny committing. And for this Mr. Dershowitz would like to have the courts declare that “time served” is a sufficient penalty and the monstrous pedophile should be free to resume his tour of L.A. cocktail parties and prime seating at the Oscars?

If his new attorney manages to pull this one off we can just throw in the towel on the legal system.