Pasquale Rotella Goes On Trial Aug. 1

Now that the Grim Sleeper murder trial has finished and serial killer Lonnie Franklin has been sentenced to death by a jury, Judge Kathleen Kennedy is preparing for her next trial: The People vs. Pasquale Rotella.

The Insomniac founder and EDM legend is being put on trial with former L.A. Memorial Coliseum event manager Todd DeStefano and promoter Reza Gerami beginning Aug. 1. The men are being charged for alleged bribery and conspiracy and paying $1.9 million in kickbacks to DeStefano in exchange for helping them put on raves at the stadium.

The case has been delayed multiple times, first to make room on Kennedy’s calendar as she oversaw the Grim Sleeper trial and again after the District Attorney’s office was charged with prosecutorial misconduct. In May 2015, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dana Aratani was pulled off the case after reading emails between Rotella and his attorney, Gary Jay Kaufman.

Aratani said the emails were read by mistake and blame it on being disorganized, but attorneys for Rotella seized on the issue and asked the judge to throw out the charges and punish the DA’s office for fostering “an environment where the prosecutors and investigators not only reviewed attorney-client-privileged emails willy-nilly but also failed to keep any records of the privileged emails that they read.”

Judge Kennedy didn’t throw out the charges, but she did approve the replacement of the prosecuting attorneys, which delayed the trial. Rotella and Gerami are also being sued by the commission that owns the building, a case that had been thrown out in 2013 by a L.A. Superior Court judge only to be reinstated by a state appellate court in 2015.

Last July, an attorney for Gerami asked the judge to halt the civil trial, arguing that it might force the defendants to incriminate themselves ahead of their criminal trial, but Judge Delila C. Lyons refused to delay the trial, which is set to begin in November.

In both cases, Rotella and Gerami allegedly paid DeStefano and former GM Pat Lynch to hold raves at the stadium with very little money actually being paid to the building’s owners.

The allegations came to light after a 15-year-old girl died at Electric Daisy Carnival in 2010 and police began to look into the building’s finances. In 2012 Lynch pled guilty to the charges to avoid a prison sentence and is expected to testify at the trial.