Music mogul Sean Diddy Combs is on trial in a federal courthouse in New York on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation for prostitution. Jurors have found him guilty on four of five counts.
The jury was unable to agree on count one, racketeering, but they had reached a verdict on numerous counts, they said in a note to the trial judge on Tuesday afternoon. At 9 a.m. on Wednesday, they will resume their discussion on that count in Manhattan.
Combs, 55, is accused of violating the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which stipulates that a defendant must have been a member of an organization that engaged in at least two overt criminal acts out of 35 counts the government has specified.
In addition, he faces two counts of sex trafficking by force, deception or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution in relation to two women: Casandra Cassie Ventura, his ex-girlfriend, and Jane, a woman who was only named in court.
The four counts involving Ventura and Jane were unanimously decided by the jury, but the racketeering offense was not. We don’t yet know their decision. According to the Associated Press, Combs was observed praying and appearing dejected in the courtroom as Tuesday’s proceedings came to an end.
The upcoming decisions are the result of a celebrity court drama that has drawn attention from all around the world and provided a detailed and frequently violent look into the life of one of the most influential musicians in the country and his nearly billion-dollar business. Three women—two ex-girlfriends and a personal assistant—told jurors of racketeering in the vein of a mob family, which involves coercion, kidnapping, threats, and beatings to conceal a decades-long pattern of sexual assaults, sex trafficking, and prostitution.
Prosecutors presented Combs and his cohorts as seducing female victims during the seven-week trial, frequently by posing as love partners. After capturing their attention, Combs allegedly used compulsion, threats of coercion, force, and controlled narcotics to induce them to have sex with male prostitutes while he watched periodically at events he called “freak-offs.”
Witnesses stated on the stand that Combs used GHB, ecstasy, and ketamine to keep the women submissive and cooperative throughout the performances.
Before rendering decisions on a number of the charges against Combs, the jury pondered for over twelve hours.
Combs Bad Boy Entertainment, according to the racketeering charge, was a criminal organization and mob family that intimidated and mistreated women and used its members to commit a long list of crimes over the years, including forced labor, kidnapping, sex trafficking, bribery, arson, and obstruction of justice.
Music
Former members of Combs’ inner circle told The Times that his alleged mistreatment of women dates back decades, following several lawsuits brought against him.
According to veteran federal prosecutor Neama Rahami, even though RICO prosecutions are more frequently linked to the mafia, street gangs, or drug cartels, any loose relationship of two or more individuals is sufficient, such as Combs’ entourage. During the trial, prosecutors sought to show a racketeering pattern or two or more RICO-predicate crimes that took place over a ten-year period. Because of this, the case relied heavily on evidence of prostitution, witness tampering, obstruction, bribery, and kidnapping.
Three women’s testimonies were crucial to the government’s case: Combs’s former lover Ventura, whose 2023 lawsuit caused his business and reputation to collapse; his most recent ex-girlfriend Jane; and his former secretary, who was only known in court as Mia.
California
Prosecutors gave weeks of gruesome, breathtaking testimony in order to get Combs’ case to the jury. Was it sufficient?
Ventura said throughout the trial that she felt caught in a vicious cycle of physical and sexual abuse at Combs, which included years of rape, beatings, and sexual blackmail.
She said Combs watched and planned the freak-offs and threatened to release films of her having sex with multiple male sex workers while high on drugs and drenched in baby oil.
A notorious hotel beating that was caught on hotel security cameras resulted from one of those freak-offs. Video from that night in March 2016 shows Combs kicking and striking Ventura as she tries to defend herself and cowers in front of a bank of elevators at a hotel in Los Angeles. Then he pulls her toward their hotel room down the hallway while holding her hooded hoodie.
Combs is seen tossing a vase at her from a second camera point. She sustained eye bruises, a chubby lip, and a bruise that prosecutors said was still noticeable when she wore sunglasses and a lot of makeup on the red carpet for a movie premiere two days later.
According to the Associated Press, Assistant U.S. Atty. Christy Slavik told jurors during closing arguments that Combs utilized a tiny army of subordinates to damage women and cover it up, and that he relied on shame and quiet to allow and extend his abuse.
“Combs doesn’t take no for an answer,” he stated.
Nation & World
Sean Diddy Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment was a show business juggernaut at its peak, combining fashion, style, music, video, and liquor to create a company that made Combs a billionaire. Was it a criminal operation, indeed?
The defense team for Combs chose not to call a witness and instead went directly to closing arguments when it came time to make their case. According to Rahami, the former federal prosecutor, the defense anticipated that jurors would wonder why the defendants on the stand opted to remain in Combs’ sphere in certain circumstances and failed to report the behavior to authorities at the time it was happening.
In closing, Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo told jurors that federal prosecutors had overstated their case and attempted to use the hip-hop mogul’s swinger lifestyle to elevate it to the most serious federal offenses—racketeering and sex trafficking—without providing any supporting evidence. According to Agnifilo, Combs actually has a drug issue, and his relationship with Ventura was a contemporary love tale in which the mogul is responsible for the domestic abuse that came to light during the trial.
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