Sean Combs, seen right here in Los Angeles in 2019, is on trial in New York, going through federal legal prices together with intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
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Phillip Faraone/Getty Pictures
Advisory: This report incorporates descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.
Over its first two weeks, the highest-profile witness to testify within the legal 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. Because of this, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial to this point has incessantly 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 extensively seen video wherein he will be seen attacking her in a California resort 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 power and worry as a way of management. (After CNN aired that video in Might 2024, Combs revealed a video apology that has since been faraway from social media.)
The federal government’s case is about far more than simply the video.
As a result of this can be a federal trial, with prices 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 actually need to point out from a prosecution perspective is that there was a legal group in play right here that dedicated numerous 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 stage, does not fulfill the federal commonplace,” she says.
What are the fees Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution prices, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing ladies into taking part in business intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse staff. He additionally allegedly organized for girls and intercourse staff to be flown to him throughout state strains. That is an enormous a part of what Cassie Ventura testified about. She stated she felt pressured to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely depart. Combs’ protection workforce is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment consists of a minimum of one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards Combs beneath a pseudonym.
Racketeering is essentially the most difficult cost to grasp. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering prices — also referred to as RICO — to combat organized crime.
“RICO is historically a statute that was designed to prosecute the mob and different organizations that had been primarily hiding their conduct by official organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions had been fairly efficient, a minimum of in New York, for instance, and there aren’t as many at the moment. So it is expanded into different areas the place you may need an in any other case official enterprise that can also be engaged in legal misconduct, and possibly utilizing that official enterprise to cover that legal misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a official enterprise empire — spanning music, clothes manufacturers, alcohol and media properties — he was utilizing these companies to gasoline and conceal legal actions. Consider this cost as being like cash laundering, however as a substitute of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. In keeping with the federal indictment, these included kidnapping, arson, bribery, pressured labor and abusing and coercing ladies. The opposite authorities witnesses who’ve testified about these alleged actions embrace the musician Scott Mescudi — higher referred to as Child Cudi — who stated on the stand Thursday that he believes that Combs broke into his home and was concerned in setting fireplace to his automobile after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been relationship.
Cassie Ventura’s story remains to be on the middle of the prosecution’s case
Beidel says the prosecution may 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 properly, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.
“Ventura covers a reasonably lengthy timeframe and wide selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Any individual who testifies in that manner is far more comprehensible to a jury than while 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 might have form of a narrator to start out out with the place they’re getting the story of their head to some extent.”
The Southern District of New York has an especially excessive success price for convictions — properly above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the resort video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with prices as broad as those aimed toward Combs, an enormous query stays: Will the prosecution be capable to persuade jurors that he was the top of a legal group? The courtroom estimates that the trial will proceed till late June a minimum of.
This story consists of reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.