Sean Combs, seen right here in Los Angeles in 2019, is on trial in New York, dealing with federal prison costs together with intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Phillip Faraone/Getty Photographs
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Phillip Faraone/Getty Photographs
Advisory: This report comprises 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 informed the jury that he raped and abused her. In consequence, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial to this point has steadily been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”
And if individuals know only one factor in regards to the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is most likely a extensively seen video during which he could 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 power and worry as a way 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 far more than simply the video.
As a result of it is a federal trial, with costs 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 indicate from a prosecution perspective is that there was a prison group in play right here that dedicated various 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 courtroom degree, would not fulfill the federal normal,” she says.
What are the costs Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution costs, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing girls into taking part in industrial 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 stated she felt pressured to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely depart. Combs’ protection staff is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment contains a minimum of one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards Combs below a pseudonym.
Racketeering is essentially the most sophisticated cost to grasp. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering costs — also referred to as RICO — to struggle 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 professional organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions have been fairly efficient, a minimum of 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 professional enterprise that can also be engaged in prison misconduct, and possibly utilizing that professional enterprise to cover that prison misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a professional 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 accordance with the federal indictment, these included kidnapping, arson, bribery, pressured labor and abusing and coercing girls. The opposite authorities witnesses who’ve testified about these alleged actions embody 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 automotive 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 might have a broader strategic profit as effectively, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.
“Ventura covers a fairly lengthy timeframe and big selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Any individual who testifies in that means is far more comprehensible to a jury than if 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’ve gotten 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 an especially excessive success price for convictions — effectively above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the lodge video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with costs as broad as those aimed toward Combs, a giant query stays: Will the prosecution be capable of persuade jurors that he was the pinnacle of a prison group? The courtroom estimates that the trial will proceed till late June a minimum of.
This story contains reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
