Sean Combs, seen right here in Los Angeles in 2019, is on trial in New York, going through federal prison prices together with intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Phillip Faraone/Getty Photographs
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Phillip Faraone/Getty Photographs
Advisory: This report accommodates descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.
Over its first two weeks, the highest-profile witness to testify within the prison trial of hip-hop tycoon Sean Combs has been his ex-girlfriend, singer and mannequin Cassie Ventura. In often-intense moments on the stand, she instructed the jury that he raped and abused her. In consequence, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial to this point has continuously been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”
And if folks know only one factor concerning the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is in all probability a extensively seen video wherein he might be seen attacking her in a California lodge in 2016. Combs was seen kicking and dragging her, and throwing a vase at her — footage that has been key proof to this point for prosecutors arguing that Combs used pressure and concern as a way of management. (After CNN aired that video in Might 2024, Combs printed a video apology that has since been faraway from social media.)
The federal government’s case is about way more than simply the video.
As a result of it is a federal trial, with prices of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution — all of which Combs has pleaded not responsible to — the prosecutors have a really specific job.
“What they actually need to point out from a prosecution perspective is that there was a prison group in play right here that dedicated quite a few unlawful acts over time,” says former prosecutor Jennifer Beidel. She now practices in Michigan as a authorities investigations and company compliance lawyer, used to work in the identical federal workplace that’s at present prosecuting Combs: the Southern District of New York.
“So merely discovering that Cassie Ventura was the topic of home violence, whereas that is clearly terrible and a vital factor from a state courtroom stage, would not fulfill the federal customary,” she says.
What are the costs Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution prices, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing girls into collaborating in business intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse employees. He additionally allegedly organized for ladies and intercourse employees to be flown to him throughout state traces. That is an enormous a part of what Cassie Ventura testified about. She stated she felt compelled to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely go away. Combs’ protection group is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment consists of at the least one different alleged sufferer who will testify in opposition to Combs below a pseudonym.
Racketeering is probably the most difficult cost to grasp. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering prices — often known as RICO — to battle organized crime.
“RICO is historically a statute that was designed to prosecute the mob and different organizations that had been basically hiding their conduct by means of authentic organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions had been fairly efficient, at the least in New York, for instance, and there aren’t as many as we speak. So it is expanded into different areas the place you may need an in any other case authentic enterprise that can also be engaged in prison misconduct, and perhaps utilizing that authentic enterprise to cover that prison misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a authentic enterprise empire — spanning music, clothes manufacturers, alcohol and media properties — he was utilizing these companies to gas and conceal prison actions. Consider this cost as being like cash laundering, however as an alternative of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. In keeping with the federal indictment, these included kidnapping, arson, bribery, compelled labor and abusing and coercing girls. The opposite authorities witnesses who’ve testified about these alleged actions embrace the musician Scott Mescudi — higher often known as Child Cudi — who stated on the stand Thursday that he believes that Combs broke into his home and was concerned in setting hearth to his automobile after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been relationship.
Cassie Ventura’s story remains to be on the heart of the prosecution’s case
Beidel says the prosecution may need had no alternative however to current Cassie Ventura as a witness very early on — she’s eight and a half months pregnant. However it could have a broader strategic profit as nicely, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.
“Ventura covers a reasonably lengthy timeframe and big selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Any person who testifies in that means is way more comprehensible to a jury than whenever you placed on perhaps 10 witnesses for a similar period of time, when every of them has one little nugget, and the jury has to place that collectively. So you’ve got type of a narrator to start out out with the place they’re getting the story of their head to a point.”
The Southern District of New York has a particularly excessive success fee for convictions — nicely above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the lodge video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with prices as broad as those aimed toward Combs, an enormous query stays: Will the prosecution be capable of persuade jurors that he was the top of a prison group? The courtroom estimates that the trial will proceed till late June at the least.
This story consists of reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
