Sean “Diddy” Combs acquired a standing ovation from fellow inmates when the music mogul returned to jail after successful acquittals on potential life-in-prison costs, offering what his lawyer says might need been the very best factor he might do for Black incarcerated males in America.
“All of them stated: ‘We by no means get to see anybody who beats the federal government,’” lawyer Marc Agnifilo stated in a weekend interview days after a jury acquitted Combs of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy costs.
Combs, 55, stays jailed after his Wednesday (July 2) conviction on prostitution-related costs and will nonetheless face a number of years in jail at an upcoming sentencing after being credited for 10 months already served.
After federal brokers raided his houses in Los Angeles and Miami in March 2024, the lawyer stated he advised Combs to count on arrest on intercourse trafficking costs.
“I stated: ‘Possibly it’s your destiny in life to be the man who wins,’” he recalled throughout a phone interview briefly interrupted by a jailhouse name from Combs. “They should see that somebody can win. I believe he took that to coronary heart.”
Blunt trial technique works
The decision got here after a veteran crew of eight protection legal professionals led by Agnifilo executed a trial technique that resonated with jurors. Combs handed legal professionals notes throughout efficient cross examinations of practically three dozen witnesses over two months, together with Combs’ ex-employees.
The legal professionals advised jurors Combs was a jealous home abuser with a drug drawback who participated within the swinger way of life by way of threesomes involving Combs, his girlfriends and one other man.
“Chances are you’ll assume to your self, wow, he’s a very unhealthy boyfriend,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos advised jurors in her Could opening assertion. However that, she stated, “is solely not intercourse trafficking.”
Agnifilo stated the blunt speak was a “no brainer.”
“The violence was so clear and up entrance and we knew the federal government was going to attempt to confuse the jury into considering it was a part of a intercourse trafficking effort. So we needed to inform the jury what it was so that they wouldn’t assume it was one thing it wasn’t,” he stated.
Combs and his legal professionals appeared deflated Tuesday when jurors stated they have been deadlocked on the racketeering depend however reached a verdict on intercourse trafficking and lesser prostitution-related costs. A decide ordered them again to deliberate Wednesday.
“Nobody is aware of what to assume,” Agnifilo stated. Then he slept on it.
Morning shock awakes lawyer
“I get up at three within the morning and I textual content Teny and say: ”We’ve to get a bail software collectively,” he recalled. “It’s going to be a great verdict for us however I believe he went down on the prostitution counts so let’s attempt to get him out.”
He stated he “type of whipped everyone into feeling higher” after concluding jurors would have convicted him of racketeering if that they had convicted him of intercourse trafficking as a result of trafficking was an alleged element of racketeering.
Agnifilo met with Combs earlier than court docket and Combs entered the courtroom rejuvenated. Smiling, the onetime Catholic schoolboy prayed with household. In lower than an hour, the jury matched Agnifilo’s prediction.
The seemingly chastened Combs mouthed “thanks” to jurors and smiled as household and supporters applauded. After he was escorted from the room, spectators cheered the protection crew, a number of chanting: “Dream Group! Dream Group!” A number of legal professionals, together with Geragos, cried.
“This was a serious victory for the protection and a serious loss for the prosecution,” stated Mitchell Epner, a lawyer who labored with Agnifilo as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey over twenty years in the past. He credited “a dream crew of protection legal professionals” in opposition to prosecutors who nearly at all times win.
Agnifilo showcased what would grow to be his trial technique — belittling the costs and mocking the investigation that led to them — final September in arguing unsuccessfully for bail. The case in opposition to Combs was what occurs when the “federal authorities comes into our bedrooms,” he stated.
Legal professionals gently questioned most witnesses
Throughout an eight-week trial, Combs’ legal professionals picked aside the prosecution case with principally mild however agency cross-examinations. Combs by no means testified and his legal professionals referred to as no witnesses.
Sarah Krissoff, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, stated Combs’ protection crew “had a story from the start they usually did all of it with out placing on any witnesses. That’s masterful.”
Paradoxically, Agnifilo expanded using racketeering legal guidelines as a federal prosecutor on an organized crime activity power in New Jersey twenty years in the past, utilizing them typically to indict road gangs in violence-torn cities.
“I knew the weak factors within the statute,” he stated. “The statute may be very mechanical. If you know the way the automobile works, you realize the place the fail factors are.”
He stated prosecutors had “dozens of fail factors.”
“They didn’t have a conspiracy, they simply didn’t,” he stated. “They principally had Combs’ private life and tried to construct racketeering round private assistants.”
Some private assistants, even after viewing movies of Combs beating his longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, had glowing issues to say about Combs on cross examination.
As soon as freed, Combs more likely to re-enter home abusers program
For Combs, Agnifilo sees an extended highway forward as soon as he’s freed as he works on private demons, probably re-entering a program for home batterers that he had simply began earlier than his arrest.
“He’s doing OK,” stated Agnifilo, who speaks with him 4 or 5 occasions each day.
He stated Combs genuinely needs enchancment and “realizes he has flaws like everybody else that he by no means labored on.”
“He burns scorching in all issues. I believe what he has come to see is that he has these flaws and there’s no quantity of fame and no quantity of fortune that may erase them,” he stated. “You’ll be able to’t cowl them up.”
For Agnifilo, a ultimate shock awaited him after Combs’ bail was rejected when a person collapsed into violent seizures on the elevators outdoors the courtroom.
“I’m like: ‘What the hell?’” recalled the lawyer schooled in treating seizures.
Agnifilo straddled him, pulling him onto his aspect and utilizing a foot to stop him from rolling backward whereas a regulation associate, Jacob Kaplan, put a backpack underneath the person’s head and Agnifilo’s daughter took his pulse.
“We made positive he didn’t choke on vomit. It was loopy. I used to be apprehensive about him,” he stated.
The person was finally taken away aware by rescue employees, leaving Agnifilo to ponder a tumultuous day.
“It was like I used to be getting punked by God,” he stated.
