The music tycoon Sean “Diddy” Comink was declared guilty on Wednesday for prostitution, but the most serious positions were authorized: extortion and sexual trafficking, after a federal criminal trial of eight weeks in New York.
Before his destiny was announced, combs sat surrounded by his legal team reading a Psalm 11 impression, a biblical passage that emphasizes God's God, even in the midst of adversity.
As the jury of eight men and four women issued his verdict, Comink, who had appeared in Morose a day before facing the possibility of a life imprisonment, was exultant. He pumped his fist in the air and took the air “thanks” to the jurors. He fell on his knees and placed his head on his chair as in prayer. “Mr. Combs has received his life for this jury,” said defense lawyer Mar Agnifilo Judge Arun Subramanian.
The scene within the Manhattan court limits a legal drama that generated global attention and offered an already violent graphic vision of the life of one of the most powerful musical figures in the nation and its company almost one billion dollars.
The divided decision leaves the combs that face up to 10 years in prison for the two prostitution positions, but the verdict is at least one partial victory for the celebrity, and the legal experts argue that the prosecutors made critical errors to overload it and not prove their case.
“Today's verdict is no less than a complete and total failure by the prosecution in what will be the most expensive prostitution judgment in the history of the United States,” said Neama Rahami, former federal prosecutor.
During the trial, the jurors heard of three women, two ex -girlfriends and a personal assistant, who described a culture within the empire that prosecutors were compared to an organized mafia -style crime operation. When accusing the zipper combs, the government alleged that its company, Bad Boy Entertainment, worked as a criminal company that threatened and abused women and used members to participate in a litany of crimes that include kidnapping, sex trafficking, bribery, caused fire, forced labor and obstruction of justice.
The prosecutors portrayed combs and their associates as attracting the victims, often under the pretext of a romantic relationship. Once he had won their interest, prosecutors said the combs used strength, threats of strength, coercion and drugs to participate in sexual acts with male prostitutes while occasionally observed in meetings that the combs knew as “promotions.”
On the stand, the witnesses testified that combs gave the women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and fulfilled” during the performances.
“The sexual crimes deeply scars to the victims, and the disturbing reality is that sexual crimes are too present in many aspects of our society. Victims support the heartbreaking physical and mental abuse, which leads to lasting traum United for the Southern District of New York, he said in a statement after the vertic.
After the verdict was announced, Subramanian told defense and prosecutors to present letters on their positions about the possibility of freeing the pending sentence. Combs has been in custody since its accusation last year. The court is expected to resume this afternoon to make a decision.
The verdict was a bitter disappointment for the defenders of the victims, said Lauren Hersh, former head of the Sexual Trafficking Unit at the Kings County District Office in Brooklyn and now the national director of the world of the world of the activist group without exploitation.
After successful numbers such as R. Kelly and cult leader Keith Raniere, some experts saw progress in expanding popular understanding of how sex traffic operated and how victims could respond to him. However, after this verdict, “this will launch 100% a chilling effect on prosecutors, who will be reluctant to present similar positions even when the evidence is overwhelming,” said Hersh.
“It is a great setback, especially at this time when the powerful have continually operated impunity,” said Hersh.
The government's case was largely based on three key witnesses: the Lover of the combs, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, whose civil demand 2023 began to unravel the combs empire; His former most recent friend, who was identified only as Jane; and his former assistant, identified in the court only as mine.
During the trial, MIA testified that ComBs sexually assaulted her, and Jane testified that the monsters continued long after Ventura had filed her demand and the combs properties had been raided by national security researchers.
But it was the R&B Ventura singer, who had an 11 -year relationship with ComBs, who provided some of the most disturbing testimonies of the trial.
Douglas Wigdor, Ventura's lawyer, said his client “showed an unquestionable fortress and caught attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without impact.”
“We are happy that he has finally been responsible for two federal crimes, something he has never faced in his life,” Wigdor said.
The prosecutors accused the combs under the Law of Rackeer Organizations influenced and corrupt, commonly known as Rico, which requires that a defendant be part of a company involved in at least two open criminal acts of 35 crimes listed by the Government. These crimes include murder, bribery and extortion.
Although rich cases are more typically associated with the mafia, street gangs or drug cartels, any loose association of two or more people is sufficient, legal experts say. Part of presenting that case at the ComBs trial required that the organization shows a pattern of criminal behavior, or predicted acts, such as bribery, kidnapping or prostitution, for a period of 10 years.
But rich cases are difficult to process by design, legal experts say.
“Rico is a very rigid and difficult law to satisfy,” said Mitchell Epner, former assistant of the United States prosecutor in New Jersey who worked in numerous cases of sexual trafficking and involuntary servitude. “It requires an ongoing criminal structure, a continuity of the members of a criminal organization. It is difficult for prosecutors to prove, and the defense did a very good job by pointing out the deficiencies of a rich prosecution at the technical level.”
In the trial, Ventura testified that he felt “trapped” in a cycle of physical and sexual abuse by combs, and that the relationship involved years of batteries, sexual blackmail and rape.
She said that combs threatened to filter videos of her sexual encounters with numerous male sex workers, while intoxicated and covered with baby oil while watching and orchestrated the monsters.
One of those monsters led to an infamous hotel beating that was captured in the hotel security cameras. The video images of that March night 2016 show the combs and kick Ventura while falling and tries to protect themselves in front of an elevator bank of the hotel. Then he drags her down the hall with his hoodie to his hotel room.
A second angle from another camera captures combs by throwing a vase towards her. She suffered bruises in her eye, a swollen lip and a bruise that prosecutors showed was still visible during a premiere of a movie two days later, where she wore sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.
At the trial, prosecutors said combs and members of their group worked to cover up the incident. Eddie García, a former Security Guard of the Intercontinental Hotel, testified that ComBs gave him a brown paper bag containing $ 100,000 in cash for the video.
Ventura testified that the police visited their department. She answered some of her questions, but told the jury that she still wanted to protect the combs at that time.
The combs defense team was aggressive in the interrogation, marking witnesses about why they did not inform the celebrity at that time or simply left it. They presented support and love text messages after the alleged attacks.
The defense also focused on money and the material elements that women obtained from the combs and pointed out that the government never accused any other conspirators and did not call any of the internal circles of the combs to testify.
Rahami, the former prosecutor, said that sex traffic charges were weak due to text messages, which were evidence of consent.
“The only real possibility of a prosecutor's victory was organized crime and testing an act of predicate not related to sex such as kidnapping, fire, extortion or bribery,” he said. “The fact that the jury even rejected that argument shows the many defects in the case of the Prosecutor's Office.”
Even so, Rahami said that the government should have presented positions of rape and kidnapping against combs, calling the decision not “one of the many errors of the Prosecutor's Office.”
When the combs defense team arrived at the time to present their case, they chose to move directly to the closing arguments without presenting a witness.
Marc Agnifilo, one of Comong's lawyers, at the closing told jurors that federal prosecutors “exaggerated” their case and tried to convert the Hip-Hop Swinger lifestyle into the most serious federal crimes: extortion and sexual trafficking, without evidence to support it. Actually, combs has a drug problem and its relationship with Ventura was a “modern love story” in which the tycoon “has domestic violence” that was revealed in the trial, Agnifilo said.
“This trial was a great bet and combs won that commitment. Everything is stacked against the defendant who entered a federal case, particularly like this. His lawyers were intelligent and possessed the bad facts. They fought in the things that mattered and was worth it,” said Anna Cominsky, an associated law teacher and the director of Criminal Defense of the Criminal Defense Clinic of the New York Law School.
David Ring, a lawyer who represents the victims of sexual abuse, said the government overreacted when accusing the case.
“This is a victory for combs,” Ring said. “He was facing life imprisonment if he is convicted of Rico's charges. Instead, he probably turns a couple of years in prison and returns to his commercial empire.”
Even so, Comps lost in the public opinion court, added the lawyer.
“The irony of the verdict is that if combs had simply resolved Cassie Ventura's demand before she presented it, there would be no criminal case and combs would continue to be a free man in his business,” Ring said.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
