More than a dozen charges against Shepard Fairey dropped in Boston suit; about as many more to go

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Artist Shepard Fairey got a big break in his court case involving the city of Boston, but he’s not out of the woods yet.

Prosecutors said they dropped 14 vandalism charges against the Los Angeles street artist, who is best known for creating the ‘Hope’ poster for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Court papers filed Tuesday revealed that lawyers didn’t have enough evidence to prove that it was Fairey himself who placed stickers on signposts and other public property in Roxbury, Mass.

The district attorney for Suffolk County said he still has the option of pursuing 13 other vandalism-related charges against the artist.

Fairey’s lawyer Tuesday disputed the numbers, saying 13 charges, not 14, had been dismissed and that his client was still fighting 15 more, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

‘We’re happy that those cases have been dismissed, and we’re looking forward to others being dismissed as well that rely on the same set of facts that these did,’ the artist’s lawyer was quoted as saying.

Fairey, 39, was originally arrested and charged with vandalism on Feb. 6. He is also in the midst of a legal battle with the Associated Press, which claims that the artist violated copyright laws when he used one of its photographs for his ‘Hope’ poster.

-- David Ng