Since February 21, the Eagles have brought their alibis to court, as three men stand trial for a crime involving handwritten lyrics to “Hotel California†and additional Eagles songs. But the trial surprisingly ended early on March 6, when prosecutors filed to dismiss the case. The non-jury criminal trial in Manhattan centered on over 80 pages of the band’s lyrics, some of which ended up at auction after a writer sold them to a rare-books dealer. When the first manuscripts were put up for sale in 2012, singer Don Henley claimed they had been stolen, leading the Manhattan district attorney’s office to get involved. (It’s not the first time Henley has taken legal action over “Hotel California.â€) Now, more than a decade later, charges have been dropped against the men who tried to sell the lyrics, and questions abound over next steps for Henley and those men. Here’s what to know.
Why was the case dismissed?
Judge Curtis Farber dismissed the case at the request of prosecutors on March 6, as the trial was set to enter its third week. “The People brought this matter forward because we believed the evidence, when fully presented, would prove defendants’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,†wrote Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes, per Rolling Stone. “Nevertheless, the prosecution’s confidence in the merits of this case is not enough — the People’s evidence must be fully presented and rigorously tested.â€
The prosecutors’ somewhat mysterious request came days after Henley’s team waived his attorney-client privilege, which gave over 6,000 pages of new documents to the defense, including emails between Henley, Eagles manager Irving Azoff, and their lawyers. As he dismissed the case, Farber accused Henley, Azoff, and their lawyers of abusing attorney-client privilege “to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging to their position that the lyric sheets were stolen.†The defendants reportedly hugged in court after the case was dismissed.
What happens next?
Henley’s attorney vowed that the rocker would “pursue all his rights in the civil courts†following the dismissal of the criminal trial. “The attorney-client privilege is a foundational guardrail in our justice system, and rarely, if ever, should you have to forsake it to prosecute or defend a case,†attorney Dan Petrocelli told Rolling Stone. “As the victim in this case, Mr. Henley has once again been victimized by this unjust outcome.†The dismissal does unintentionally answer questions over why this was brought as a criminal trial in the first place.
However, attorneys for the defendants also hinted at civil action against Henley. “These are three factually innocent men. The question is now … where do these men go to get their reputations back?†said Stacey Richman, attorney for Craig Inciardi, after the dismissal. “We’ll be assessing our rights in the wake of the demonstration that these men are factually innocent.†Scott Edelman, attorney for Edward Kosinski, added, “This case never should have been brought.â€
What happened to the lyrics?
It began more than four decades ago, when Ed Sanders, a writer who founded the rock band the Fugs, was working on a biography of the Eagles. The band had reportedly allowed Sanders to access their archives, which included notepads of lyrics for the 1976 album Hotel California. Sanders never published the memoir, but apparently he kept the notepads. He sold them to Glenn Horowitz, a rare-books dealer, for $50,000 in 2005. Horowitz then sold the lyrics to Craig Inciardi, a former curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum (he was suspended over the charges) and Edward Kosinski, owner of the memorabilia company Gotta Have Rock and Roll.
After the men attempted to sell some of those lyrics through Kosinski’s company, Henley caught wind of the scheme and bought them himself for $8,500. He soon got the Manhattan district attorney’s office involved, filing a stolen-goods report. Inciardi and Kosinski continued to try to sell the manuscripts, even listing the “Hotel California†lyrics at Sotheby’s in 2016, per the Associated Press. (The auction house later withdrew them.) Police raided the men’s homes in 2019, taking 84 pages of lyrics along with 1,300 pages of paperwork and multiple electronic devices. The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the men in 2022.
What were the charges?
Horowitz, Inciardi, and Kosinski were each charged with conspiracy in the fourth degree, stemming from the attempts to sell the allegedly stolen lyrics. That charge carries a sentence of up to four years in prison. Horowitz, who first bought the manuscripts, was also charged with attempted criminal possession of stolen property and two counts of hindering prosecution. Inciardi and Kosinski were each charged with criminal possession of stolen property. “New York is a world-class hub for art and culture, and those who deal cultural artifacts must scrupulously follow the law,†said DA Alvin Bragg when announcing the charges in 2022. “There is no room for those who would seek to ignore the basic expectations of fair dealing and undermine the public’s confidence and trust in our cultural trade for their own ends.†Crucially, none of the men were actually charged with stealing the lyrics, though the charges were predicated on the lyrics being stolen. Sanders, the writer, was not charged.
So, how did they get the lyrics?
That is the key question of the case. Henley, per the AP, told a grand jury that he never gave Sanders the lyrics, but the defense disputes this. In the indictment, Horowitz said Sanders told him that he was given his choice of Henley’s materials to use for the book. But once attorneys for Henley got involved after they attempted to sell the lyrics, Sanders offered different stories. He variously claimed he took the papers from a dressing room or stagehand as part of his research. In 2017, he said he’d gotten the manuscripts from the Eagles’ Glenn Frey, who died in 2016. Horowitz reportedly said crediting the late Frey “would make this go away once and for all.â€
The defense argued the lyrics were not stolen in a 2022 motion to dismiss the case, according to Rolling Stone, claiming Sanders merely obtained them while shadowing the band. The motion was denied.
Why is this a criminal case?
The defense wants to know as well. Many disagreements over memorabilia are settled, including a previous one involving Horowitz and Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell’s papers. The defense in this case claims that Henley took advantage of prosecutor, who are also fans of the Eagles, leading to criminal charges rather than a civil case or settlement. Kosinski’s lawyer even said one investigator with the DA’s office asked for backstage Eagles passes, according to the AP, before a prosecutor chided them. Prosecutors called this claim “a conspiracy theory rather than a legal defense.â€
What did Don Henley say in his testimony?
Don Henley finished testifying on February 28, after multiple days on the stand. Throughout, he insisted the lyrics “were my property,†as he said on the final day, per the Associated Press. “I never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell.†Henley testified that he didn’t even remember offering his lyric manuscripts to Ed Sanders, the biographer who first sold them, because they were “very personal, very private.†(On a 1980 phone call later played during the trial, he said he’d “try to dig through†his lyrics for Sanders.) “You know what?†Henley said in court. “It doesn’t matter if I drove a U-Haul truck across country and dumped them at his front door. He had no right to keep them or to sell them.â€
A significant portion of questioning focused on Henley’s 1980 arrest after the Eagles’ breakup. Police had found him at home in Los Angeles with drugs and a naked 16-year-old girl who had overdosed. He said he had called a sex worker when he was alone after the band’s breakup, after previously asserting that the overdose occurred during a band farewell party. But Henley insisted, at the time and now, that he did not know the girl’s age and had not had sex with her. He later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, served two years’ probation and paid a $2,500 fine.
Henley pushed back against the defense’s attempts to paint him as forgetful of the period when he loaned the lyrics due to his drug use. “You know, ‘sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll’ is not revelatory,†he said. Henley admitted he used cocaine “intermittently†during the 1970s, but not when performing and doing business. “If I was some sort of a drug-filled zombie, I couldn’t have accomplished everything I accomplished before 1980 and after 1980,†he said. (Henley’s voice reportedly grew hoarse during this line of questioning, and he was given a lozenge at one point.)
Things kicked off on a starry note when famed manager Irving Azoff was the first witness to testify on February 22. Per Rolling Stone, Azoff confirmed that Sanders had been paid $75,000 to write a book on the band. However, Henley and Frey were “very disappointed†in the product, and Azoff himself thought the coverage of the band’s breakup was “unacceptable.†Azoff additionally said Henley “felt he was being extorted†when he purchased the first manuscript of his lyrics that went to auction. The written lyrics are “very personal†to Henley, Azoff added, noting that he stores them in a barn on his property in Malibu. (He also said Henley preferred to write on yellow notepads, while Frey preferred white.) A contract shown as evidence said the materials given to Sanders were the Eagles’ property, but Azoff said he didn’t know if Sanders had been told that selling the lyrics violated the contract.
This post has been updated.