SEVEN CHARGES AGAINST SHEPARD FAIREY DISMISSED

Citing a lack of evidence, a Boston Municipal Court clerk-magistrate yesterday rejected seven of the seventeen vandalism charges Boston police are trying to bring against celebrated graffiti artist Frank Shepard Fairey, Fairey’s lawyer said. According to the Boston Globe, the clerk magistrate said that those seven charges should not go forward in criminal court because there is not enough proof he committed the acts of vandalism. “The evidence has to be virtually nil for a clerk to do that,” said Fairey’s lawyer, Jeffrey Wiesner, who is based in Boston.

Today, Fairey is to return to Boston Municipal Court to face the ten other charges of vandalism. Wiesner said in court that Boston police are needlessly going after Fairey because stickers bearing his images have been posted on stop signs and guardrails throughout the city. Those stickers have been mass produced, are sold on Amazon.com, and could have been posted by anyone, the lawyer said, and added that the Institute of Contemporary Art, which is exhibiting Fairey’s work, has distributed some of the stickers for free.

But prosecutors said that one of the charges stems from the January 24 discovery of a six-by-eight-foot mural painted on a condominium on Massachusetts Avenue that took “time and knowledge.” After the hearing, Fairey did not comment on the charges, but smiled wanly and offered this: “This is a fun process, I’ll say that.”