Amid trial, case over Eagles’ lyrics tossed
NEW YORK — The criminal trial of a prominent rare books dealer accused of conspiring to possess dozens of pages of handwritten lyrics by Eagles co-founder Don Henley collapsed abruptly Wednesday as a judge in Manhattan dismissed the charges in the case, citing concerns about how evidence had been handled.
The dismissal by Justice Curtis Farber of state Supreme Court, two weeks into the trial that had already included days of testimony by Henley, was a severe blow to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which began investigating the case several years ago.
It was also a form of vindication for the book dealer, Glenn Horowitz, and two other men standing trial along with him.
The case centered on some 100 pages of draft lyrics for hit songs by the Eagles including “Hotel California,” “New Kid in Town” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”
Prosecutors say the notes were stolen decades ago by an author who had signed a contract in the late 1970s to write a book about the Eagles that was never published. The author, Ed Sanders, has not been charged. He sold the documents in 2005 to Horowitz, who in turn sold them to the two other defendants, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which began investigating after complaints by Henley.
The trial took a sudden turn after Henley’s lawyers sent a trove of evidence to defense lawyers and prosecutors last weekend. That evidence, including hundreds of email messages between Henley, his agent, a private investigator and several lawyers working for him, was produced after Henley waived attorney-client privilege.
Defense lawyers were upset that the material had not been provided earlier, telling Farber on Monday that they should have been able to refer to the email messages while cross-examining Henley and one of his lawyers, Eric Custer, who had testified the previous week.
Some statements in the emails were at odds with testimony delivered in court, defense lawyers said, and they asked that the charges against their clients be dismissed.
Farber told the lawyers Monday that he was disinclined to dismiss the charges but added that there was “no question there is a discovery violation here” that “appeared designed to withhold information” about crucial elements of the case, including whether the lyric sheets had been stolen.
He asked defense lawyers to review the newly disclosed material and report back to him so he could decide on the “correct sanction.”
The trial had drawn widespread attention because it involved documents related to one of the most beloved bands of the 1970s, whose breezy country-rock style sold millions of records. The accusations were leveled at a book and manuscript dealer who had placed the papers of Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe in university libraries and had worked to sell Bob Dylan’s archive for a sum estimated at up to $20 million.
Much of the case had centered upon questions of when and how Sanders — a founder of a countercultural Lower East Side band called the Fugs and the author of a book about Charles Manson and his cult — obtained the draft lyrics.
In 2005, Sanders wrote in an email that an assistant for Henley had mailed him some of the archival material he had examined “at Henley’s place in Malibu.”
Henley testified that he had given Sanders access to documents stored in the barn of his organic farm in Malibu, California, but had never surrendered ownership of that material.
Defense lawyers said their clients could not be found guilty because no theft could be proved and introduced evidence including old mailing labels that they said suggested that Henley had sent material to Sanders’ home in Woodstock, New York.
Prosecutors had written in a pretrial filing that a contract between Sanders and the Eagles “made clear that Sanders had had no ownership interest in the lyrics and no right to take or possess the lyrics outside of his work on the book the Eagles had hired him to write.” They added that the Eagles material “became ‘stolen’” when Sanders failed to return it to Henley within a reasonable period of time.