Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has been discovered responsible by a jury of transportation for prostitution after a federal legal trial in New York however not responsible on probably the most severe fees: Racketeering and intercourse trafficking.
The break up determination leaves the celeb going through as much as 10 years in jail. The decision is no less than a partial victory for Combs, whose attorneys had argued that prosecutors overcharged him and didn’t show their case.
The jury’s verdict in Manhattan caps a authorized drama that generated world consideration and supplied a graphic and infrequently violent glimpse into the lifetime of one of many nation’s strongest music figures and his close to billion-dollar enterprise. Jurors heard from three girls, two former girlfriends and a private assistant, who described a tradition throughout the empire that prosecutors likened to a mob-style racketeering operation with coercion, kidnapping, threats and beatings accomplished to cowl up a sample of sexual assaults, intercourse trafficking and prostitution over a long time.
After the decision was introduced, Decide Arun Subramanian advised protection attorneys and prosecutors to submit letters on their positions about the opportunity of releasing Combs pending sentencing. Combs has been in custody since his indictment final 12 months.
“Mr. Combs has been given his life by this jury,” protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo advised the choose.
Combs faces as much as 10 years in jail for every of the 2 counts of prostitution.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors portrayed Combs and his associates as luring feminine victims, typically below the pretense of a romantic relationship. As soon as he had gained their curiosity, prosecutors stated Combs used power, threats of power, coercion and medicines to get them to interact in intercourse acts with male prostitutes whereas he sometimes watched in gatherings that Combs known as “freak-offs.”
On the stand, witnesses testified that Combs gave the ladies ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “preserve them obedient and compliant” through the performances.
In charging Combs with racketeering, the federal government alleged his Dangerous Boy Leisure functioned as a mob household and legal enterprise that threatened and abused girls and used enterprise members to interact in a litany of crimes over time together with kidnapping, intercourse trafficking, bribery, arson, pressured labor and obstruction of justice.
The federal government’s case relied closely on three key witnesses: Combs’ onetime lover, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, whose 2023 lawsuit started the unraveling of Combs’ empire; his most up-to-date ex-girfriend, who was recognized solely as Jane; and his former assistant, recognized in courtroom solely as Mia.
Throughout the trial, Mia testified that Combs sexually assaulted her and Jane testified that the freak-offs continued effectively after Ventura had filed her go well with and Combs’ properties had been raided by Homeland Safety investigators.
But it surely was R&B singer Ventura, who had an 11-year relationship with Combs, who supplied a few of the trial’s most annoying testimony.
Prosecutors charged Combs below the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, generally known as RICO, which requires {that a} defendant be a part of an enterprise concerned in no less than two overt legal acts out of 35 offenses listed by the federal government. These offenses embody homicide, bribery and extortion.
Although RICO instances are extra usually related to the mafia, road gangs or drug cartels, any free affiliation of two or extra folks is sufficient, stated former federal prosecutor Neama Rahami. A part of making that case within the Combs trial required proving the group confirmed a sample of legal habits, or predicate acts — resembling bribery, kidnapping or prostitution — over a ten 12 months interval, Rahami stated.
At trial, Ventura testified she felt “trapped” in a cycle of bodily and sexual abuse by Combs, and that the connection concerned years of beatings, sexual blackmail and a rape.
She claimed Combs threatened to leak movies of her sexual encounters with quite a few male intercourse employees whereas drug-intoxicated and coated with child oil as he watched and orchestrated the freak-offs.
A kind of freak-offs led to an notorious lodge beating that was captured on lodge safety cameras. Video footage from that March 2016 evening exhibits Combs punching and kicking Ventura as she cowers and tries to guard herself in entrance of an L.A. lodge elevator financial institution. He then drags her down the corridor by her hooded sweatshirt towards their lodge room.
A second angle from one other digital camera captures Combs throwing a vase towards her. She suffered bruising to her eye, a fats lip and a bruise that prosecutors confirmed was nonetheless seen throughout a film premiere two days later, the place she donned sun shades and heavy make-up on the crimson carpet.
Within the trial, prosecutors stated Combs and members of his group labored to cowl up the incident. Ventura testified that the police visited her condo. She answered just a few of their questions, however advised the jury she nonetheless wished to guard Combs on the time.
Eddie Garcia, a former InterContinental Resort safety guard, testified that Combs gave him a brown paper bag containing $100,000 in money for the video of the incident.
In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Atty. Christy Slavik advised jurors Combs “counted on silence and disgrace” to allow and delay his abuse and used a “small military” of workers to hurt girls and canopy it up, based on the Related Press.
Combs, he stated, “doesn’t take no for a solution.”
When it got here time for Combs’ protection group to current their case, they opted to maneuver straight to closing arguments with out presenting a witness. Rahami, the previous federal prosecutor, stated the protection anticipated jurors would query why these on the stand didn’t report the habits to authorities on the time it was occurring and, in some instances, selected to remain in Combs’ orbit.
Marc Agnifilo, one in every of Combs’ attorneys in closing, advised jurors that federal prosecutors “exaggerated” their case and sought to show the hip-hop mogul’s swinger way of life into probably the most severe of federal offenses — racketeering and intercourse trafficking, with out the proof to again it up. In actuality, Combs has a drug downside and his relationship with Ventura was a “trendy love story” the place the mogul “owns the home violence” that was revealed within the trial, Agnifilo stated.
Based on Combs’ protection, there was no kidnapping of his former assistant, Capricorn Clark, who described being held for a number of days and compelled to take a lie detector check over lacking jewellery, and “no proof” that Combs set on hearth Child Cudi’s Porsche. He solely paid off the safety guard for the InterContinental Resort safety video that exhibits him assaulting Ventura to keep away from “unhealthy publicity,” not a police investigation.
The lawyer stated Ventura, who settled her go well with with Combs for $20 million, and Mia and Jane have been all motivated by cash. Agnifilo identified that the federal government by no means indicted another co-conspirators and by no means referred to as to testify any of Combs’ inside circle.
