Sean Combs, seen right here in Los Angeles in 2019, is on trial in New York, dealing with federal legal costs 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 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 date has ceaselessly been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”
And if folks know only one factor in regards to the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is in all probability a broadly seen video wherein 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 to date 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 this can be a federal trial, with costs of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact 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 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 at present 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 an important factor from a state court docket stage, would not fulfill the federal normal,” she says.
What are the fees Combs faces?
Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to interact in prostitution costs, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing ladies into collaborating 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 traces. 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 depart. 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 in opposition to Combs below a pseudonym.
Racketeering is probably the most sophisticated cost to know. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering costs — often known as RICO — to combat 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 legit 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 at this time. So it is expanded into different areas the place you might need an in any other case legit enterprise that can also be engaged in legal misconduct, and possibly utilizing that legit enterprise to cover that legal misconduct.”
Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a legit 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 an alternative of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. In response to 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 embody the musician Scott Mescudi — higher often known 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 middle of the prosecution’s case
Beidel says the prosecution might 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 might have a broader strategic profit as effectively, 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 method is far more comprehensible to a jury than once 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 will have 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 resort video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with costs as broad as those geared toward Combs, a giant query stays: Will the prosecution have the ability to persuade jurors that he was the top of a legal group? The court docket estimates that the trial will proceed till late June no less than.
This story contains reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.
