New York (AFP) – Jurors were deliberating Tuesday in the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs to determine whether the music mogul was the ringleader of a criminal organization that facilitated coercive sex marathons with escorts. The New York jury ended their first day of deliberations Monday without a verdict. Before the courthouse closed, they sent a note requesting clarification about legal rules surrounding drug distribution.
The seven-week trial included at times disturbing testimony — two women spoke of feeling forced into lurid sex parties, and some former employees told jurors of violent outbursts — along with thousands of pages of phone, financial, and audiovisual records. Now jurors must scrutinize what they’ve heard and seen for the truth. Combs, 55, faces life in prison if convicted on five federal charges that include racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation for purposes of prostitution. The producer and entrepreneur, once one of the most powerful people in the music industry, denies the charges.
Central to the prosecution’s case is their accusation that Combs led a criminal enterprise of senior employees who “existed to serve his needs” and enforced his power with offenses including forced labor, drug distribution, kidnapping, bribery, witness tampering, and arson. But defense attorney Marc Agnifilo underscored that none of those individuals testified against Combs, nor were they named as co-conspirators. Many witnesses were given immunity orders so they could speak without fear of incriminating themselves.
To convict Combs on racketeering, jurors must find that prosecutors showed beyond reasonable doubt that he agreed with people within his organization to commit at least two of the eight crimes forming the racketeering charge. The eight men and four women must reach a unanimous decision, deciding either a guilty or not guilty verdict on each count.
Combs is also charged with sex trafficking two women: Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym Jane. Both were in long-term relationships with Combs. And both testified of abuse, threats, and coercive sex in wrenching detail. But while the defense has conceded that Combs at times beat his partners, his lawyers insisted the domestic violence does not amount to the sex trafficking or racketeering he is charged with.
Agnifilo scoffed at the picture painted by prosecutors of a violent, domineering man who fostered “a climate of fear.” Combs is a “self-made, successful Black entrepreneur” who had romantic relationships that were “complicated” but consensual, Agnifilo said. The defense dissected the accounts of Ventura and Jane and at times even mocked them, insisting the women were adults making free choices.
But in their final argument, prosecutors tore into the defense, saying Combs’s team had “contorted the facts endlessly.” Prosecutor Maurene Comey told jurors that by the time Combs had committed his clearest-cut offenses, “he was so far past the line he couldn’t even see it.” “In his mind he was untouchable,” she told the court. “The defendant never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them. That ends in this courtroom,” she said. “The defendant is not a god.”
© 2024 AFP
