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 Pictures
Advisory: This report incorporates 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. Consequently, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial thus far has often 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 by which he could 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 thus far for prosecutors arguing that Combs used power and worry 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 expenses of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution — all of which Combs has pleaded not responsible to — the prosecutors have a really explicit job.
“What they really want to indicate from a prosecution perspective is that there was a felony group in play right here that dedicated a variety of 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 the moment 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 court docket stage, does not fulfill the federal normal,” she says.
What are the costs Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution expenses, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing ladies into taking part in industrial intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse employees. He additionally allegedly organized for girls and intercourse employees to be flown to him throughout state strains. That is an enormous 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 staff is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment contains no less than one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards 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 expenses — 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 have been primarily hiding their conduct via reputable organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions have been fairly efficient, no less than in New York, for instance, and there aren’t as many right now. So it is expanded into different areas the place you may need an in any other case reputable enterprise that can also be engaged in felony misconduct, and possibly utilizing that reputable enterprise to cover that felony misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a reputable 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 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 ladies. 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 fireplace to his automobile after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been courting.
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 properly, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.
“Ventura covers a reasonably lengthy timeframe and wide selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Someone who testifies in that approach is way 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 could have type of a narrator to begin out with the place they’re getting the story of their head to some extent.”
The Southern District of New York has a particularly 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 expenses as broad as those aimed toward Combs, an enormous query stays: Will the prosecution have the ability to persuade jurors that he was the top of a felony group? The court docket estimates that the trial will proceed till late June no less than.
This story contains reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
