NEW YORK.- From the beginning, the case was very unusual: a criminal trial centered on the dispute over the ownership of the letters handwritten by Hotel California and other hits by the Eagles band. Its ending was even more unexpected.
In the middle of judgmentNew York prosecutors abruptly dropped their case against three collectibles experts who had been charged with conspiracy to retain and sell the pages, which Eagles co-founder Don Henley claimed were stolen, artifacts that reflected the creative process of the band.
Explaining the shocking turn in the case, prosecutors agreed that defense attorneys had been surprised in recent days by obtaining 6,000 pages of communications involving Henley and his attorneys and associates. The material was provided to both sides only in recent days, after Henley and his attorneys apparently made the belated decision to waive his privilege to keep their legal discussions confidential.
“These delayed revelations illustrated relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore when Henley and other prosecution witnesses were on the stand,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes told the court.
With that, rare book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock memorabilia dealer Edward Kosinski were acquitted of all charges, which included conspiracy to possess property. stolen
100 pages about lyrics Hotel California
The case centered on approximately 100 pages that reflected the creation of a classic rock piece. The 1976 album Hotel California It ranks as the third best-selling of all time in the United States, largely due to the power of the title song, evocative and disturbing, about a place where you can give up your room whenever you want, but you can never leave.
Prosecutors had said the defendants knew the pages were of dubious ownership but tried to keep and sell them anyway, conspiring to invent a provenance that would pass muster with auction houses and prevent Henley from demanding they return the documents.
Through their lawyers, the defendants claimed that they were legitimate owners of pages that were not stolen.
The next step is to rebuild our reputation, Inciardi said in a written statement after the charges were dropped. Kosinski, upon leaving court, simply said that he felt very good about the end of the case.
Horowitz hugged his relatives through tears and then left the court without comment. One of his attorneys, Jonathan Bach, said the case should never have been filed.
“Unfair result
A lawyer for Henley, for his part, said he is not done with the matter.
Mr. Henley has once again been the victim of this unfair result, attorney Dan Petrocelli said in a statement. He will enforce all his rights in civil courts.
One of Kosinski’s attorneys, Scott Edelman, said they would also evaluate next steps.
The district attorney in this case was blinded by the fame and fortune of a celebrity, Edelman said outside court, and that blinded them to information they were not being given.
In formally dismissing the case, Judge Curtis Farber said prosecutors appeared to have been manipulated. Without naming names, he said witnesses and his attorneys used attorney-client privilege to obfuscate and hide information they believed would be harmful. The communications that led to the dismissal of the case were not publicly released.
Auction
The defense contended that Henley gave the lyric pages decades ago to a writer working on an unpublished Eagles biography and then sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who began auctioning some of the pages in 2012.
Henley, who realized he didn’t have them when they appeared for sale, reported them stolen. He testified that at trial he let the book’s author pore over the documents for research, but he never gave them away or gave them to anyone to keep or sell.
The writer was not accused of any crime and has not testified. He has also not responded to messages about the trial sent to him.
FUENTE: AP
