DA ‘checks out’ of ‘Hotel California’ lyrics case mid-trial after rocker Don Henley discloses 6,000 pages of new evidence late
The criminal case against three men accused of a scheme involving allegedly stolen lyrics to The Eagles’ iconic hit “Hotel California” imploded mid-trial Wednesday after the band’s frontman Don Henley disclosed new evidence that cast doubt on the prosecution.
In a stunning turn of events, Justice Curtis Farber dropped the charges faced by rare-books dealer Glenn Horowitz, ex-Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinki — finding that Henley “manipulated” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office by failing to turn over 6,000 pages of key evidence until midway through the trial.
Henley and his lawyers tried to weaponize their attorney-client privilege to “hide information that they believed would be damaging,” Farber said at a hearing Wednesday morning in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The judge signed off on Manhattan prosecutors’ bid to toss the charges in light of the new evidence, which a courthouse source told The Post included emails from Henley that cast doubt on his claim that the handwritten lyrics to “Hotel California” and other valuable merchandise had been stolen.
“We are checking out and leaving the courtroom,” said Stacey Richman, Craig Inciardi’s lawyer, on Wednesday — in a reference to the song’s famous line “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
The new evidence surfaced after Henley and Irving Azoff, the Eagles’ longtime manager, repeatedly cited — against prosecutors’ “express and repeated requests” — their “privilege” to keep communications with their lawyers secret while taking the stand as witnesses at the trial, the DA’s office said.
But the pair “waived” that privilege in the last few days, leading to “the belated production of approximately 6,000 pages of material” that the defendants’ lawyers should have been given a chance to grill Henley and Azoff about, wrote Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes in a letter to the court.
Farber praised Bragg’s office Wednesday for “eating a slice of humble pie” and moving to dismiss the charges — but lawyers for the men accused in the scheme slammed the DA for letting the case get this far.
“The district attorney in this case got blinded by the fame and fortune of a celebrity and brought a case that would never have been brought if it was just a normal person involved,” Scott Edelman, Kosinki’s attorney, said outside court. “That blinded them to the information that they weren’t being given, and led to the events of today.”
Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinki had been charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property and various other offenses for what prosecutors had claimed was a plan hatched to sell the handwritten lyrics and other memorabilia back to Henley in a scheme to make thousands off the “stolen” documents.
Prosecutors alleged that Henley’s rough draft of the 1976 single — from what ranks as one the country’s highest-selling albums ever — was the cherry on top of a trove of documents taken from his Malibu home.
Henley, who took the stand in the eye-catching case over three days last week, testified that he’d lent the manuscripts to the writer Ed Sanders to use for a biography of the band Sanders was working on at the time.
Raw copies of hits like “Life in the Fast Lane” and “New Kid in Town” were also included in the allegedly looted documents, whose fate remained unclear Wednesday.
Henley’s attorney Daniel Petrocelli said Wednesday that the legendary rock frontman was still the case’s “victim,” and added that a civil lawsuit was in the works.
“Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome, and he will pursue all his rights in the civil courts,” Petrocelli told the Post.
