Jury returns split verdict in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial, not guilty on most serious charges

Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has been found guilty by a jury of transportation for prostitution after a federal criminal trial in New York but not guilty on the most serious charges: Racketeering and sex trafficking.

The split decision leaves the celebrity facing up to 10 years in prison. The verdict is at least a partial victory for Combs, whose attorneys had argued that prosecutors overcharged him and did not prove their case.

The jury’s verdict in Manhattan caps a legal drama that generated global attention and offered a graphic and often violent glimpse into the life of one of the nation’s most powerful music figures and his near billion-dollar enterprise. Jurors heard from three women, two former girlfriends and a personal assistant, who described a culture within the empire that prosecutors likened to a mob-style racketeering operation with coercion, kidnapping, threats and beatings done to cover up a pattern of sexual assaults, sex trafficking and prostitution over decades.

After the verdict was announced, Judge Arun Subramanian told defense attorneys and prosecutors to submit letters on their positions about the possibility of releasing Combs pending sentencing. Combs has been in custody since his indictment last year.

“Mr. Combs has been given his life by this jury,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo told the judge.

Combs faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the two counts of prostitution.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Combs and his associates as luring female victims, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Once he had gained their interest, prosecutors said Combs used force, threats of force, coercion and drugs to get them to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes while he occasionally watched in gatherings that Combs referred to as “freak-offs.”

On the stand, witnesses testified that Combs gave the women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and compliant” during the performances.

In charging Combs with racketeering, the government alleged his Bad Boy Entertainment functioned as a mob family and criminal enterprise that threatened and abused women and used enterprise members to engage in a litany of crimes over the years including kidnapping, sex trafficking, bribery, arson, forced labor and obstruction of justice.

The government’s case relied heavily on three key witnesses: Combs’ onetime lover, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, whose 2023 lawsuit began the unraveling of Combs’ empire; his most recent ex-girfriend, who was identified only as Jane; and his former assistant, identified in court only as Mia.

During the trial, Mia testified that Combs sexually assaulted her and Jane testified that the freak-offs continued well after Ventura had filed her suit and Combs’ properties had been raided by Homeland Security investigators.

But it was R&B singer Ventura, who had an 11-year relationship with Combs, who provided some of the trial’s most disturbing testimony.

Prosecutors charged Combs under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as RICO, which requires that a defendant be part of an enterprise involved in at least two overt criminal acts out of 35 offenses listed by the government. Those offenses include murder, bribery and extortion.

Though RICO cases are more typically associated with the mafia, street gangs or drug cartels, any loose association of two or more people is enough, said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahami. Part of making that case in the Combs trial required proving the organization showed a pattern of criminal behavior, or predicate acts — such as bribery, kidnapping or prostitution — over a 10 year period, Rahami said.

At trial, Ventura testified she felt “trapped” in a cycle of physical and sexual abuse by Combs, and that the relationship involved years of beatings, sexual blackmail and a rape.

She claimed Combs threatened to leak videos of her sexual encounters with numerous male sex workers while drug-intoxicated and covered with baby oil as he watched and orchestrated the freak-offs.

One of those freak-offs led to an infamous hotel beating that was captured on hotel security cameras. Video footage from that March 2016 night shows Combs punching and kicking Ventura as she cowers and tries to protect herself in front of an L.A. hotel elevator bank. He then drags her down the hall by her hooded sweatshirt toward their hotel room.

A second angle from another camera captures Combs throwing a vase toward her. She suffered bruising to her eye, a fat lip and a bruise that prosecutors showed was still visible during a movie premiere two days later, where she donned sunglasses and heavy makeup on the red carpet.

In the trial, prosecutors said Combs and members of his group worked to cover up the incident. Ventura testified that the police visited her apartment. She answered a few of their questions, but told the jury she still wanted to protect Combs at the time.

Eddie Garcia, a former InterContinental Hotel security guard, testified that Combs gave him a brown paper bag containing $100,000 in cash for the video of the incident.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Atty. Christy Slavik told jurors Combs “counted on silence and shame” to enable and prolong his abuse and used a “small army” of employees to harm women and cover it up, according to the Associated Press.

Combs, he said, “doesn’t take no for an answer.”

When it came time for Combs’ defense team to present their case, they opted to move straight to closing arguments without presenting a witness. Rahami, the former federal prosecutor, said the defense expected jurors would question why those on the stand did not report the behavior to authorities at the time it was occurring and, in some cases, chose to stay in Combs’ orbit.

Marc Agnifilo, one of Combs’ lawyers in closing, told jurors that federal prosecutors “exaggerated” their case and sought to turn the hip-hop mogul’s swinger lifestyle into the most serious of federal offenses — racketeering and sex trafficking, without the evidence to back it up. In reality, Combs has a drug problem and his relationship with Ventura was a “modern love story” where the mogul “owns the domestic violence” that was revealed in the trial, Agnifilo said.

According to Combs’ defense, there was no kidnapping of his former assistant, Capricorn Clark, who described being held for several days and forced to take a lie detector test over missing jewelry, and “no evidence” that Combs set on fire Kid Cudi’s Porsche. He only paid off the security guard for the InterContinental Hotel security video that shows him assaulting Ventura to avoid “bad publicity,” not a police investigation.

The attorney said Ventura, who settled her suit with Combs for $20 million, and Mia and Jane were all motivated by money. Agnifilo pointed out that the government never indicted any other co-conspirators and never called to testify any of Combs’ inner circle.