Sean Combs reacts because the jury foreperson and courtroom deputy learn verdicts of the 5 counts in opposition to him throughout Combs’ intercourse trafficking trial in New York Metropolis on this courtroom sketch. The music mogul was discovered responsible of two counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution however acquitted of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
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Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
This report contains descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.
A federal jury in Manhattan has discovered Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul also called Diddy or Puff Daddy, responsible on two counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution. He was discovered not responsible of 1 rely of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of intercourse trafficking.
The jurors deliberated for greater than 13 hours earlier than asserting their cut up resolution. When the primary “not responsible” verdict was introduced for the racketeering cost, gasps and cheers had been heard in each the principle courtroom and in an overflow room full of followers, vacationers, social media influencers and reporters. Members of each Combs’ household and his protection crew started to cry. Combs collapsed to the bottom and knelt in gratitude.
Prosecutors within the Southern District of New York weren’t capable of efficiently argue to the jury that their two prime witnesses, Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and one other former girlfriend who testified beneath the pseudonym “Jane,” had not participated consensually within the intercourse and drug marathons that Combs variously known as “freak offs,” “lodge nights” or “wild king nights.”
Combs didn’t take the stand in his personal protection, nor did his crew of attorneys current any witnesses. As an alternative, they pointed to textual content messages through which Ventura and Jane typically expressed enthusiasm for these periods, regardless of the ladies later saying on the stand that they felt pressed and manipulated into planning and taking part in them. These relationships, the protection crew argued, had been poisonous and maybe abusive, however failed to satisfy the federal government’s requirements of federal criminality.
The protection crew additionally labored steadily by six weeks of the prosecutors’ shows to erode the credibility of most of the authorities’s witnesses.
Among the many items of video proof the jury noticed was a lodge surveillance tape of Combs beating Ventura. Protection lawyer Marc Agnifilo, in his closing argument, stated: “We personal the home violence.” Combs’ acts of bodily abuse, one occasion of which the jury noticed on the lodge surveillance video, and to which Ventura and others testified, weren’t themselves the topic of a standalone cost by the prosecution, however had been included as an element inside the intercourse trafficking accusation.
The jury additionally discovered Combs not responsible of different crimes that had been folded into the racketeering cost together with drug distribution, bribery, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Regardless of a witness testifying that he and his colleagues obtained a $100,000 bribe immediately from Combs, the jury didn’t discover him responsible of bribery. Merely put: The jury didn’t consider that the prosecution offered convincing proof of their two fundamental accusations.
The prosecution was additionally unable to show to the 12-person jury, comprised of eight males and 4 girls, that Combs had run a legal conspiracy or an organized crime syndicate inside the racketeering cost. In recent times, federal prosecutors have utilized racketeering (also called RICO) fees fairly broadly — and in sure high-profile circumstances in opposition to well-known hip-hop artists and within the extremely publicized trial of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was discovered responsible of racketeering and intercourse trafficking in 2021.
A racketeering conviction would have carried essentially the most severe potential incarceration time for Combs, with a most sentence of as much as life in jail. Convictions for the counts of intercourse trafficking by pressure, fraud or coercion — one pertaining to Ventura and the opposite pertaining to “Jane — would have every carried a statutory minimal sentence of 15 years and as much as life in jail.
The 2 counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution — one pertaining to Ventura and male intercourse employees, and one pertaining to Jane and male intercourse employees — carry a most sentence of 10 years every. In a listening to afterward Wednesday, in keeping with reporting from the Related Press, Choose Arun Subramanian denied Combs bail earlier than his sentencing.
Outdoors of this federal legal trial, Combs continues to face dozens of civil lawsuits introduced by former staff and associates. Ventura, who introduced a civil swimsuit in opposition to Combs in Nov. 2023, settled inside someday for $20 million. As a part of that settlement, Combs didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.
In his skilled heyday, Combs, who has received three Grammy Awards, was on the forefront of bringing hip-hop to a mainstream pop viewers — and made himself the face of the label he co-owned, Dangerous Boy Information. He additionally constructed an empire of associated companies, together with the Sean John trend firm, a profitable promotional partnership with the alcoholic beverage big Diageo, and a media enterprise that included the once-popular VH1 actuality present “Making The Band,” which featured him as an impossibly demanding boss who incessantly demeaned aspiring staff.
Further reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
