Protection attorneys check with Sean Combs on this courtroom sketch. The jury started deliberations at Combs’ intercourse trafficking trial in New York Metropolis on Monday.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
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Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
Because the jury started deliberating within the high-profile federal felony trial of Sean Combs on Monday, a transparent narrative wrestle got here into focus, one that may determine whether or not or not these jurors at a decrease Manhattan federal court docket will discover Combs responsible.
The hip-hop mogul is charged with intercourse trafficking, transportation to have interaction in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy. The trial centered on allegations involving two of his former girlfriends, the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a lady who testified on the stand underneath the pseudonym “Jane.” He has pleaded not responsible.
All through the practically two-month proceedings, the federal government painted Combs as violent, domineering and possessive, a tyrannical determine with huge sources who compelled or coerced his companions into unlawful intercourse acts throughout cities and utilizing his companies to orchestrate them. The protection didn’t dispute the home abuse that each ladies and different witnesses testified about; as an alternative, it has countered that the sexual encounters Ventura and Jane had with male intercourse staff underneath Combs’ route, which he often filmed, had been fully consensual.
Against this, each ladies testified that they had been coerced into taking part in these marathon classes, which Combs sometimes called “freak-offs,” “lodge nights” or “wild king nights.”
Former federal prosecutor and co-founder of West Coast Trial Legal professionals Neama Rahmani tells NPR that the three units of costs towards Combs are fairly disparate in how simple or troublesome they could be to show to a jury past an inexpensive doubt.
“The simplest, after all, is the prostitution, of the Mann Act violation,” Rahmani says. (The prosecution supplied receipts of assorted escorts’ journey throughout state traces in addition to their lodge bookings.)
“In all probability probably the most troublesome is the intercourse trafficking,” Rahmani continues, “not due to the weather, however due to the potential protection of consent in proving power, fraud or coercion. Racketeering, or RICO, is the broadest. And there are lots of potential RICO predicate acts similar to bribery, extortion, prostitution, drug distribution and compelled labor. So the jurors, with respect to racketeering, must discover a felony enterprise. They’ll have to seek out an illegal settlement [between Combs and multiple former employees], and so they’ll have to seek out two or extra racketeering acts. The truth that it is so broad might result in the potential for a consensus on a number of of the better predicate acts.”
“Racketeering conspiracy does have quite a lot of components,” he says. “The protection spent quite a lot of time saying that there was no enterprise and this was simply Combs doing issues on his personal. These had been all private bills. Then they assault the conspiracy, saying that there was no illegal settlement. Clearly, the federal government placed on six totally different government or private assistants of Diddy, and so they had been actively concerned in organising the resorts for the free coffees and procuring a number of the authorized and pharmaceuticals. A few of them had been concerned within the extortion and the bribery, though they weren’t referred to as as witnesses.”
In all, 34 witnesses testified towards Combs over six weeks. The primary witness to look on the stand was Ventura, who took the stand pregnant. She alleged that Combs had repeatedly bodily assaulted her, raped her, trafficked her and sought to regulate each facet of her private {and professional} life. (Ventura, who dated Combs on-and-off from 2007 to 2018, filed a civil swimsuit towards the mogul in November 2023 that was settled out of court docket a day later for $20 million, an quantity she confirmed throughout her testimony on this trial.) She painted her relationship with Combs as coercive and abusive, and stated {that a} lodge surveillance video from 2016, during which Combs could be seen violently attacking her within the hallway, exhibits her attempting to flee a “freak-off.”
Throughout six days of testimony that adopted, “Jane” painted an identical image. She alleged that her relationship with Combs, which started in 2021, oscillated between “love bombing” and “sexual exploitation” all the best way as much as his arrest and indictment in September 2024. Combs launched her to “lodge nights” that might run wherever from 12 and 30 hours. “Jane” stated she grew to become financially depending on Combs, and that if she tried to withstand a “lodge night time” he would deliver up these funds. “I could not say no to him,” she instructed the court docket.
To construct its case, the prosecution introduced greater than 30 different witnesses — together with a number of former workers — and extra proof in an try to point out that Combs was manipulating these ladies into illegal intercourse acts and in addition utilizing his enterprise empire to cowl up associated crimes that reach to bribery, obstruction of justice and drug distribution.
Because the prosecution’s case drew to a detailed on every week in the past Monday, protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo instructed Decide Arun Subramanian that his staff wouldn’t name any witnesses, and that it will current proof that Ventura and “Jane” had been prepared companions and never victims.
Final Tuesday was a whirlwind day in court docket, as each the prosecution and protection rested their circumstances inside hours of each other. The authorities’s case, which lasted six weeks, sought to assemble its argument round trafficking. Prosecutors aimed to steer the jury that Combs used his energy and affect to maneuver Ventura, “Jane” and intercourse staff throughout state traces to have interaction in “freak-offs” — and hold it clandestine by coercion.
Jurors had been proven receipts, cellphone information and textual content messages referring to a few of these interstate journeys. In addition they heard testimony from brokers of Homeland Safety Investigations who raided Combs’ properties in March 2024 and located weapons, medicine and hundreds of bottles of child oil and lubricant. A number of male intercourse staff had been referred to as to testify, as had been workers who labored cleanup for “freak-offs.” The jury was proven video clips and screengrabs of some “freak-offs,” although this proof was shielded from the remainder of the courtroom, together with the press.
After a lunch break on Tuesday, one lawyer on the protection staff, Alexandra Shapiro, moved for acquittal on all 5 costs Combs faces — two counts of intercourse trafficking, two counts of transportation for prostitution and one depend of racketeering conspiracy — saying that the federal government failed to satisfy the burden of proof. In the course of the change, Combs instructed Decide Subramanian that he was “doing a superb job.”
The protection — which revealed that Combs wouldn’t take the stand as a part of its case that afternoon — then wrapped up in underneath half-hour. The proof it introduced to the jury appeared set on underscoring a story established throughout opening arguments and bolstered throughout a number of cross-examinations: that the artist and businessman could also be an unsavory character, and even a felony, however that he’s not responsible of the issues he’s at present charged with. The protection argued that his intercourse life was “unconventional” and poisonous, however that his relationships had been consensual and never coercive. In its temporary presentation, the protection shared textual content messages from Ventura to Combs saying she cherished him and entered one other doc as proof declaring minor inconsistencies within the testimony of a number of authorities witnesses. “Sean Combs is a sophisticated man, however this isn’t a sophisticated case,” protection lawyer Teny Geragos instructed the jury throughout opening arguments. “You aren’t right here to evaluate him for his sexual preferences.”
On the finish of the week, each groups delivered closing arguments that attempted to bolster their respective framings. In her remarks Thursday, prosecution lawyer Christy Slavik outlined the federal government’s case, portray Combs as a robust determine who used violence and intimidation to get no matter he needed. Protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo didn’t dispute the violence, but in addition sought to reframe Combs and his companions; he referred to as the connection between Combs and Cassie “a fantastic fashionable love story.” Whereas acknowledging Combs’ “swinger’s life-style” as unconventional, Agnifilo claimed not one of the prosecution’s witnesses had been “a part of an enterprise.”
In a rebuttal from prosecutor Maurene Comey, the lawyer alleged that Combs’ sample of violence amounted to a felony conspiracy spanning 20 years, that he believed himself to be above the regulation and that it’s the court docket’s duty to carry him accountable. “In his thoughts, he was untouchable, a god amongst males … and who would stand as much as a god?” she stated. After its six-week presentation, the federal government is now asking the jury to take that stand.
Jury deliberations are set to proceed on Tuesday morning.
