New York (AFP) – A jury reached a partial verdict Tuesday in the sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs but has been unable to agree on the most serious charge facing the music mogul — racketeering. A note from the jury to Judge Arun Subramanian did not say whether the verdict on four of the five counts against the 55-year-old Combs was guilty or not guilty.
“We have reached a verdict on counts 2, 3, 4 and 5. We are unable to reach a verdict on count 1 as we have jurors with unpersuadable opinions on both sides,” the jury note said. The judge instructed the jury to continue deliberations on the racketeering charge, but dismissed them for the day and asked them to return on Wednesday. Count One is the racketeering charge and accuses Combs of being the ringleader of a criminal organization that forced women into coercive sex marathons with escorts. It carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
In addition to racketeering, Combs faces two charges of sex trafficking and two charges of transportation for purposes of prostitution. Combs’s star fell dramatically when his former partner of 11 years, the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed a civil lawsuit accusing him of disturbing sexual, physical and emotional abuse. That case was settled out of court for $20 million, but it triggered an avalanche of similarly harrowing civil lawsuits and eventually criminal charges.
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. Central to the prosecution’s case is its 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 to avoid 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 on each count.
Combs is charged with sex trafficking two women: 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 his lawyers have conceded that Combs at times beat his partners, they insisted the domestic violence does not amount to sex trafficking or racketeering. 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,” 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. That ends in this courtroom,” she said. “The defendant is not a god.”
© 2024 AFP
