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 critical prices: Racketeering and intercourse trafficking.
The break up determination leaves the mogul dealing with 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 celeb authorized drama that generated world consideration and provided a graphic and sometimes 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 inside the empire that prosecutors likened to a mob family-style racketeering operation with coercion, kidnapping, threats and beatings finished to cowl up a sample of sexual assaults, intercourse trafficking and prostitution over a long time.
Through 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, Combs allegedly used pressure, threats of pressure, coercion and managed substances to get them to have interaction 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” in the course of the performances.
Key to the federal government’s case was the testimony of three girls: Combs’ onetime lover, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, whose 2023 lawsuit set off the unraveling of Combs’ enterprise and repute; his most up-to-date ex-girfriend, recognized solely as Jane; and his former assistant, solely recognized in court docket as Mia.
Through the trial, Mia testified that Combs sexually assaulted her and Jane testified that the freak-offs continued properly after Ventura had filed her swimsuit and Combs’ properties had been raided by Homeland Safety investigators.
Nevertheless it was R&B singer Ventura, who had an 11-year relationship with Combs, who offered early and among the most annoying testimony of the trial.
Prosecutors charged Combs below the the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, generally known as RICO, that requires a defendant to be a part of an enterprise concerned in no less than two overt legal acts out of 35 offenses listed by the federal government, amongst them homicide, bribery and extortion.
Although RICO instances are extra sometimes related to the mafia, road gangs or drug cartels, any free affiliation of two or extra folks is sufficient, like Combs’ entourage, mentioned former federal prosecutor Neama Rahami. Prosecutors needed to display a sample of racketeering or two or extra RICO predicate acts that occurred over 10 years. That’s why the proof of bribery, kidnapping, obstruction, witness tampering and prostitution grew to become key to the case.
Within the 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 staff whereas drug-intoxicated and lined with child oil as he watched and orchestrated the freak-offs.
A kind of freak-offs led to an notorious resort beating that was captured on resort 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. resort elevator financial institution. He then drags her down the corridor by her hooded sweatshirt towards their resort 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.
A canopy-up then ensued, in response to prosecutors. Ventura acknowledged that the police visited her condo. She answered just a few of their questions, however instructed the jury she nonetheless wished to guard Combs on the time.
Eddie Garcia, a former InterContinental Lodge 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 instructed jurors Combs “counted on silence and disgrace” to allow and extend his abuse and used a “small military” of staff to hurt girls and canopy it up, in response to the Related Press.
Combs, he mentioned, “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, mentioned the protection anticipated jurors would query why these on the stand didn’t report the conduct 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’ legal professionals in closing, instructed jurors that federal prosecutors “exaggerated” their case and sought to show the hip-hop mogul’s swinger life-style into probably the most critical of federal offenses — racketeering and intercourse trafficking, with out the proof to again it up. In actuality, Combs has a drug drawback and his relationship with Ventura was a “fashionable love story” the place the mogul “owns the home violence” that was revealed within the trial, Agnifilo mentioned.
In response to 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 take a look at 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 Lodge safety video that exhibits him assaulting Ventura to keep away from “unhealthy publicity,” not a police investigation.
The legal professional mentioned Ventura, who settled her swimsuit with Combs for $20 million, and Mia and Jane had been all motivated by cash. Agnifilo identified that the federal government by no means indicted some other co-conspirators and by no means known as to testify any of Combs’ interior circle.
