The break up verdict introduced Wednesday morning in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal intercourse trafficking and racketeering trial — with Combs discovered responsible of two counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution and acquitted of the extra critical expenses of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy — might have come as a shock to observers who thought federal prosecutors had a sturdy case through which they laid out how the onetime high-flying hip-hop mogul used his company as a legal enterprise to visitors ladies.
However now that Combs has been discovered not responsible of the extra critical expenses, he’s a far much less extreme sentence, lowered from a possible lifetime behind bars to what might be mere years. What type his sentence will take and what’s subsequent after he’s launched (he was denied bail on Wednesday) are some instant questions, however the burning one is extra existential for these preventing for the rights of the abused: How the hell did this occur?
Given the form Combs’ trial took and what’s identified concerning the jury’s deliberations over the previous two days, one time period has grow to be considerably ubiquitous: prosecutorial overreach. Final 12 months, when Southern District of New York federal prosecutors introduced the blockbuster indictment of Combs, the submitting contained allegations that had been stunning, as the idea of the case confirmed how Combs happy his sexual proclivities by utilizing his firm and employees as a way to visitors ladies, whom he dated for years. Then, as the federal government alleged, it was utilizing a statute that was created to go after multi-member mob operations.
This idea of what his firm really was as much as and that Combs and his workers conspired to those very particular and private ends apparently simply didn’t appear to fly with the jury, whose members had loads of crimes to think about right here. Parts of the RICO rely had been quite a few, with some as plain as day, but it surely seems just like the eight males and 4 ladies in the end didn’t take any or the entire allegations under consideration as a result of they in all probability noticed all of it as a bogus proposition. Final week, throughout closing arguments from the prosecutors, the entire components and alleged crimes had been talked about: kidnapping (of Combs’ staffer, by drive); arson, for the assault on Child Cudi’s Porsche; repeated situations of drug distribution; and so forth. RICO could be a difficult cost to show and prosecute, and because it seems prefer it was not being purchased by these women and men, all the federal government was doing for six weeks was shoving sq. pegs into spherical holes, then holding the tip product as much as the jury’s face. It’s not stunning that all of them prevented eye contact with lead prosecutor Maurene Comey because the responded to the protection group’s closing argument.
Not that there weren’t some current clues to how this is able to finish. Now, maybe the query jurors despatched on Monday afternoon relating to drug distribution offers a small key to understanding how these deliberations performed out over 12 hours. The jury primarily wished to know if it counts if the individual medicine are being distributed to had requested the accused distributor for them. With hindsight on how these 12 souls in the end dominated on the racketeering cost, this question now appears like the results of one juror making an attempt to point out one other that Cassie and “Jane” willingly (so far as the juror might have been involved) took medicine that Combs and his employees procured. And doesn’t that query on Monday afternoon appear to point that jurors — maybe not all of them, however sufficient to persuade the remaining — weren’t shopping for it when Cassie and “Jane” advised the court docket of coercive management and never with the ability to escape the hellish cycle of “freak-offs” and lodge nights. And that, it might appear, indicated a complete lack of religion within the premise of the whole RICO case in opposition to Diddy.
In fact, it wasn’t simply “overreaching” federal prosecutors who noticed the Diddy case as a racketeering and intercourse trafficking play. Many believed it was a cut-and-dry instance of a mob-like enterprise with many events working towards the kingpin’s nefarious endgame. However Combs’ protection group performed into these doubts with its relentless cross-examinations that veered, at occasions, into bullying (which Decide Arun Subramanian and prosecutors definitely identified). Girls’s rights legal professional Dr. Ann Olivarius, founding father of worldwide authorized agency McAllister Olivarius, says these expenses can fall sufferer to cultural baggage round stereotyping.
“I’m shocked the jury acquitted Sean Combs of essentially the most critical expenses of intercourse trafficking and racketeering, which I consider the proof supported. However labels like ‘trafficking’ and ‘racketeering’ carry highly effective cultural baggage — pictures of poor foreigners locked in basements or shadowy crime households,” Olivarius mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday. “Combs’ actions — although violent, degrading, and for my part, clearly inside the authorized definitions — didn’t match these stereotypes. That disconnect gave the protection room to govern the narrative, and it labored.”
Or, as New York Legislation Faculty professor Anna Cominsky put it, “the legal enterprise was the weak spot and the jury didn’t purchase it.”
Jurors additionally didn’t appear to purchase the concept Ventura and “Jane” had been absolute victims of Combs due to their participation in and expression of pleasure about his “freak-offs” or lodge nights. In court docket, prosecutors questioning them had an uphill battle in convincing a jury of New Yorkers that the ladies had been drained of company by Combs. Doubt over their testimony and the proof offered, which did present gleeful texts to Combs, solely hindered their capability to see the state of affairs for instance of coercive management, as prosecutors do .
Then there’s the query of the mysterious Juror No. 25. What position did this 51-year-old Manhattanite play through the 12 hours of deliberation? What occurred within the first of these 12 hours that led the jury to ship a word to the decide, suggesting that this peer of theirs wanted a talking-to from Decide Subramanian? And the way did the jury go from the suggestion of being hopelessly deadlocked after they went dwelling on Tuesday evening to having a unanimous choice on the racketeering cost inside an hour the next day?
This could quickly be public information when a juror decides to talk out, which appears inevitable. Till then, one can solely have a look at the notes and questions these 12 women and men requested about and theorize about how an surprising conclusion to a really sensational trial got here to be. Loads to ponder forward of Combs’ sentencing, set for Oct. 3.