Jury choice in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs intercourse trafficking trial begins right this moment : NPR

Jury choice for the trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs will start in New York Metropolis right this moment. The media mogul, who’s been in custody since his arrest final September, faces felony costs for intercourse trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transporting to interact in prostitution. Combs has pleaded not responsible on all costs.

The choice course of is anticipated to final per week, with opening statements slated for Might 12. Final month, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment within the U.S. District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York including two further counts to the prevailing costs. Combs’ attorneys requested for the trial to be delayed by two months, citing a necessity for added time to reply to the brand new indictment, however the request was denied by Choose Arun Subramanian.

The federal authorities is accusing Combs of utilizing his energy throughout the music, style and leisure industries to run a felony group that facilitated and hid intercourse crimes courting again greater than a decade. This contains intercourse trafficking, which they declare occurred when Combs would lure girls into his orbit — typically underneath the pretense of a romantic relationship — and would then coerce them into industrial intercourse acts.

“With these excessive profile instances like Harvey Weinstein and the NXIVM cult case, courts are keen to outline industrial intercourse as an alternate of intercourse not only for cash, however for something of worth,” says Aya Gruber, a felony regulation professor on the College of South California. “It could possibly be guarantees to assist your profession in leisure. It could possibly be shifting up within the hierarchy within the cult. It could possibly be numerous issues.”

Combs can also be being charged with transporting alleged victims throughout state and worldwide strains to take part in industrial intercourse acts. The racketeering portion of the indictment alleges that Combs directed his workers to solicit victims, solicit illicit substances, clear up and conceal the alleged felony exercise, together with by way of pressured labor, bribery, arson, kidnapping and obstruction of justice.

Within the lead-up to the trial, a lodge surveillance video of Combs assaulting singer and ex-partner Cassie Ventura was extremely debated by each the prosecution and the protection. Ventura, who signed to Combs’ file label, Dangerous Boy Leisure, in 2006, filed a lawsuit in November 2023 alleging that Combs trafficked, sexually assaulted and abused her all through their relationship. Combs denied the allegations, however settled the lawsuit out of courtroom inside a day of its submitting for an undisclosed quantity.

Months later, CNN revealed the lodge footage from a 2016 encounter during which Combs will be seen kicking, beating and bodily dragging Ventura down a hallway. After Combs’ arrest, prosecutors pointed to the video as proof that he could possibly be violent and will await trial in custody. Combs’ lead lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, argued that the video was not proof of trafficking, however of an remoted home dispute.

“It is our protection to those costs that this was a poisonous, loving 11-year relationship,” Agnifilo acknowledged throughout a pre-trial listening to.

Combs’ attorneys additionally argued that the CNN video had been altered and must be dismissed as proof, however their movement was denied by Choose Subramanian. The mogul has been denied bail a number of occasions.

A number of alleged victims are anticipated to testify all through the course of trial.