The filmmaker Roman Polanski has plans to return to the United States and is seeking assurances he will serve no further jail time over unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

The award-winning director of The Pianist and Chinatown, who has been a fugitive from the US for almost 40 years, claims he has reached a plea deal in the case that would keep him out of prison, his attorney Harland Braun said.

Braun has written to Los Angeles county superior court judge Scott Gordon to unseal a secret transcript of the testimony of the prosecutor in the case, which he believes will confirm the deal.

The Franco-Polish director was accused of drugging Samantha Gailey—who now uses the surname Geimer—before raping her at film star Jack Nicholson’s house in Los Angeles in 1977.

Polanski, who is now 83, admitted having unlawful sex with a minor, or statutory rape, and spent 42 days in Chino state prison before being released. But in 1978, convinced a judge was going to scrap the plea deal and hand him a hefty prison sentence, he fled for France.

Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in 2009 on a US extradition request and spent 10 months under house arrest before the Swiss authorities rejected the US order.

The US then asked Poland to extradite Polanski in January 2015, but the country’s supreme court ruled in December 2016 that he had served his time under the plea deal.

The filmmaker has been engaged in a decades-long cat-and-mouse game with US officials seeking his extradition for trial, before a global audience split between continuing outrage and forgiveness for his acts.