New York (AFP) – Jurors in the trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs head back into deliberations Wednesday, aiming to reach a unanimous decision on the case’s most serious charge of leading a criminal organization. The New York jury of eight men and four women have already come to agreement on four of the five charges — those that pertain to sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution — but told the court Tuesday there were “unpersuadable opinions on both sides” concerning the first count of racketeering. That charge paints Combs as the boss of a decades-long criminal group who directed loyal employees and bodyguards to commit myriad offenses at his behest.
The alleged crimes include forced labor, drug distribution, kidnapping, bribery, witness tampering and obstruction, arson, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. To find Combs guilty of racketeering, jurors would need to find the existence of a criminal enterprise and that the organization committed at least two of the offenses. Days ahead of the July Fourth holiday weekend, jurors announced the partial verdict — but Judge Arun Subramanian instructed them to keep working to complete it. He reiterated instructions that they had a duty to carefully consider the case as a team. Only jury members know the verdicts they’ve reached on counts two, three, four, and five.
Combs, once one of the most powerful figures in the music industry, vehemently denies all charges.
– ‘Remarkably efficient’ –
Jurors began deliberating on Monday late morning after the judge read them nearly three hours of instructions on how to apply the mountain of evidence and testimony in the case to the law. Up until Tuesday afternoon, all the jury notes concerned legal questions and a request for portions of testimony. The note announcing a partial verdict brought new tension to the courtroom. Legal teams scrutinized it before it was read aloud. The defense team was seen huddling around a visibly anxious Combs. He alternated between hanging his head, staring straight ahead, and rubbing his temples with his hand shielding his eyes. That jurors have reached a verdict on four of the five accounts is “remarkably efficient,” as defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo put it in court after the note was read aloud.
The seven-week trial included at-times disturbing testimony along with thousands of pages of phone, financial, and audiovisual records. Combs is charged with sex trafficking two women: singer Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym Jane. Both were in long-term relationships with the entrepreneur and hip hop powerhouse, and they each testified about abuse, threats, and coercive sex in wrenching detail. They both said they felt obligated to participate in Combs-directed sexual marathons with hired men.
Combs’s lawyers insist that sex was consensual. They concede domestic violence was a feature of his relationships — one harrowing example of him beating and dragging Ventura was caught on security footage that has been widely publicized. Yet while disturbing, that doesn’t amount to sex trafficking, the defense says. But prosecutors in their final argument tore into Combs’s team, who they said had “contorted the facts endlessly.”
“In his mind he was untouchable,” prosecutor Maurene Comey 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.”
© 2024 AFP
