From the beginning, the case was extremely uncommon: a legal prosecution centered on the disputed possession of a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to “Hotel California” and different Eagles hits.
Its finish was much more sudden.
In the center of trial, New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Wednesday in opposition to three collectibles consultants who had been accused of scheming to hold onto and peddle the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley maintained had been stolen, personal artifacts of the band’s inventive course of.
In explaining the beautiful turnabout, prosecutors agreed that protection legal professionals had primarily been blindsided by getting 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. The materials was offered to either side solely up to now few days, after Henley and his legal professionals apparently made a late-in-the-game determination to waive their attorney-client privilege to maintain authorized discussions confidential.
“These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore” when Henley and different prosecution witnesses had been on the stand late final month, Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Aaron Ginandes advised the courtroom.
With that, uncommon books vendor Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia vendor Edward Kosinski had been cleared of all the fees. They had included conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.
The case centered on roughly 100 pages of legal-pad pages from the creation of a traditional rock colossus. The 1976 album “Hotel California” ranks because the third-biggest vendor of all time within the U.S., in no small half on the power of its evocative, easily unsettling title monitor about a spot the place “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
Prosecutors had mentioned the defendants knew the pages had a doubtful chain of possession however sought to maintain and promote them anyway, contriving to manufacture a provenance that may go muster with public sale homes and stave off Henley’s calls for for the return of the handwritten sheets.
Through their legal professionals, the defendants contended they had been rightful homeowners of pages that weren’t stolen by anybody.
“The next step is building back our reputations,” Inciardi said in a written statement after the dismissal. Kosinski, leaving court, said only that he felt “very good” in regards to the case’s finish. Horowitz hugged tearful members of the family, then left courtroom with out commenting.
A lawyer for Henley, in the meantime, signaled that he is not executed with the matter.
“As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome,” lawyer Dan Petrocelli mentioned in an announcement. “He will pursue all his rights in the civil courts.”
One of Kosinski’s legal professionals, Scott Edelman, mentioned additionally they had been going to “consider subsequent steps.”
“The district attorney in this case got blinded by the fame and fortune of a celebrity,” Edelman mentioned exterior courtroom, “and that blinded them to the information that they weren’t being given.”
Judge Curtis Farber, for his half, mentioned the prosecutors “were apparently manipulated.”
Without naming names, he mentioned witnesses and their legal professionals used attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging.”
The communications that led to the case dismissal weren’t launched publicly. But in courtroom earlier this week, protection legal professionals mentioned the trove had recognized further potential witnesses and raised questions on some testimony from Henley and others.
The protection maintained that Henley gave the lyrics pages many years in the past to a author who labored on a never-published Eagles biography and later bought the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in flip, bought them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began placing among the pages up for public sale in 2012.
“These are three factually innocent men,” Inciardi’s lawyer, Stacey Richman.
Henley, who realized they had been lacking solely after they confirmed up on the market, reported them stolen. He testified on the trial that he let the author pore by the pages for analysis however “never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell.”
The author, Ed Sanders, wasn’t charged with any crime and wasn’t referred to as to testify. He hasn’t responded to messages in regards to the trial.
Defense legal professionals mentioned in courtroom Monday that emails they’d simply acquired confirmed that Henley initially suspected another person, earlier than somebody reminded him of the decades-old e-book undertaking.
According to the protection, the emails additionally confirmed that Henley’s legal professionals and investigator initially determined to characterize the pages’ disappearance as a housebreaking — and make no point out of Sanders’ 1979 e-book contract — as a result of they believed that referring to a housebreaking would assist their trigger. Messages searching for remark had been despatched to the Henley attorneys concerned.
The contract, usually talked about throughout the trial, mentioned the Eagles would furnish Sanders with materials, which might stay the band’s “sole property.” Prosecutors emphasised the final half. Defense legal professionals mentioned that their purchasers hadn’t recognized in regards to the contract however that it confirmed the Eagles agreed to supply issues to Sanders.
Prosecutors mentioned Wednesday that they’d repeatedly requested varied witnesses to waive their attorney-client privilege, however they selected to not till the previous few days.
But protection legal professionals famous that the Manhattan DA’s workplace labored on the case for over seven years.
While the defendants had been accused of not asking sufficient questions in regards to the pages’ possession, “it appears that failure to do a full investigation lies with the other side,” mentioned considered one of Horowitz’s legal professionals, Jonathan Bach. “This case ought to by no means have been introduced.”
On the highway to its breakdown, the nonjury trial offered generally gossipy peeks into the peak of the Eagles’ profession and the workings of the music enterprise.
The courtroom heard the band’s longtime supervisor lament on a decades-old tape about coping with “a pampered rock star” and heard Henley himself reply questions on issues starting from inventive strategies to contracts to cocaine.
During testimony that stretched throughout three days, the Grammy-winning singer and drummer held in his fingers among the pages on which he and, generally, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey spitballed phrases to such Eagles songs as “After the Thrill is Gone,” “One of These Nights” and “The Long Run.”
Henley recounted highlights from the band’s heyday, such because the writing of “Hotel California.” And he mentioned private low factors, together with his 1980 arrest after authorities reported discovering a 16-year-old lady who was ailing from drug use at his residence. It occurred because the Eagles had been breaking apart, and Henley was reeling.
“The band was everything to me, and it’s something I’d been working towards since I was 15 years old. It was my whole world” and “my identity,” he said. “We had accomplished so much in the previous decade.”
In the long term, it wasn’t the tip. The Eagles reunited in 1994 and are nonetheless touring.
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