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REM guitarist 'lied' over attack

Peter Buck
Buck denies the charges  


LONDON, England - R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck resorted to a desperate lie to cover up a drink-fuelled air rage attack, prosecutors told a UK court.

Buck was a normally respectable and quiet man who lied in an effort to protect his multi-million pound career, Isleworth Crown Court was told.

David Bate QC, prosecuting, said Buck, 45, changed from a "pleasant and polite southern gentleman" into a "nasty and foul-mouthed drunk that even his family would not recognise" after drinking about 15 glasses of wine on a flight to London in April 2001.

The guitarist denies being drunk on board the plane, common assault on an air stewardess and the cabin services director, and damaging British Airways property.

Buck, who was on a 10-hour flight from Seattle to perform at the Nelson Mandela concert in Trafalgar Square, says he had a bad reaction after taking a sleeping tablet and drinking up to six small glasses of red wine.

None of his travel companions spotted his alleged bad behaviour and Buck blacked out after taking the tablet, the court was told.

But Bate told the jury: "He has a powerful motive to change his story because he realises it will reflect badly upon him and the group of which he is so justifiably proud. He has a powerful reason to mislead in this case."

Buck had acted recklessly but in full knowledge of what he was doing despite his claims that a combination of wine, and the sleeping pill Zolpiden had sent him into a robot-like state where he was not truly responsible for his actions, Bate said.

This would have rendered Buck incapable of criminal intent but Mr Bate added: "It is a lie borne out of desperation because he knows full well that he was responsible.

"It is an attempt to provide himself with a defence however contrived and artificial when he knows he has none."

Buck has told the court he has no recollection of allegedly attacking cabin staff, splattering them with yoghurt or trying to leave the plane at 35,000ft, saying he wanted "to go home".

He also does not recall allegedly upending a hostess trolley after failing to play a CD on it, swearing at the captain and ripping up a "yellow card" warning him to behave or face arrest.

A prosecution witness also claimed to have spotted Buck slipping a knife under his sleeve.

Buck insists he did not act drunkenly. His defence says there is confusion over the identity of the culprit and that it was not Buck.

Both alleged victims have lodged compensation claims and this may have had some effect upon their evidence, the defence suggested.

Buck cannot remember anything and he finds it "very difficult to accept that the behaviour credited to him could have been him", said Richard Ferguson QC, defending.

"We hope that when he (Buck) awakens from this nightmare it will not be to face the heavy bludgeon of the law but to have restored to him his family, his freedom, and his peace of mind," he said.



 
 
 
 


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