Sean Combs, seen right here in Los Angeles in 2019, is on trial in New York, dealing with federal felony expenses together with intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
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Phillip Faraone/Getty Photos
Advisory: This report comprises descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.
Over its first two weeks, the highest-profile witness to testify within the felony 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 informed the jury that he raped and abused her. In consequence, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial to date has often been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”
And if individuals know only one factor concerning the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is most likely a broadly seen video through which he may 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 date for prosecutors arguing that Combs used drive and worry as a method of management. (After CNN aired that video in Could 2024, Combs printed a video apology that has since been faraway from social media.)
The federal government’s case is about rather more than simply the video.
As a result of it is a federal trial, with expenses of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution — all of which Combs has pleaded not responsible to — the prosecutors have a really specific job.
“What they really want to point out from a prosecution perspective is that there was a felony 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 presently 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 degree, does not fulfill the federal commonplace,” she says.
What are the costs Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution expenses, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing girls into collaborating in business intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse staff. He additionally allegedly organized for ladies and intercourse staff to be flown to him throughout state strains. That is a giant a part of what Cassie Ventura testified about. She mentioned she felt compelled to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely go away. Combs’ protection workforce is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment contains at the very least one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards Combs beneath a pseudonym.
Racketeering is probably the most difficult cost to know. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering expenses — also called RICO — to struggle organized crime.
“RICO is historically a statute that was designed to prosecute the mob and different organizations that have been basically hiding their conduct by means of respectable organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions have been fairly efficient, at the very 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 might need an in any other case respectable enterprise that can also be engaged in felony misconduct, and possibly utilizing that respectable enterprise to cover that felony misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a respectable enterprise empire — spanning music, clothes manufacturers, alcohol and media properties — he was utilizing these companies to gas and conceal felony actions. Consider this cost as being like cash laundering, however as a substitute of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. Based on 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 referred to as Child Cudi — who mentioned on the stand Thursday that he believes that Combs broke into his home and was concerned in setting hearth to his automotive after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been relationship.
Cassie Ventura’s story continues to be on the heart of the prosecution’s case
Beidel says the prosecution might need had no selection 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 fairly lengthy time-frame and wide selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Any individual who testifies in that means is rather more comprehensible to a jury than whenever you placed on possibly 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 have got kind of a narrator to begin out with the place they’re getting the story of their head to a point.”
The Southern District of New York has an especially excessive success price for convictions — nicely above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the lodge video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with expenses as broad as those aimed toward Combs, a giant query stays: Will the prosecution have the ability to persuade jurors that he was the top of a felony group? The courtroom estimates that the trial will proceed till late June at the very least.
This story contains reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.