U.S. v. Combs: In the Jury's Hands

Legal analysis from covering the Sean "P. Diddy" Combs trial

For the last month, I’ve had the sometimes-dubious honor of covering the federal criminal trial of music mogul Sean Combs.

The trial, and its sordid details laying bare his victims' indignities, has been covered to exhaustion. By now, we have many of the facts about what his infamous “freak-offs” (or F/Os) actually entailed for the women around him. For sanity, dignity, and brevity (each closing was 4+ hours), I won't recap the testimony. I also won’t link each of my lil TV hits following each successive development, but here’s a playlist. I owe BIG thanks to Fox 5 DC, Court TV, Merit TV, and Fox 5 NY for hosting me.

Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy (YES that inscrutable crime, more below), two counts of transportation for prostitution (or violations of the Mann Act), and two counts of Sex Trafficking.

Ironically, this isn’t Diddy’s first mention on my substack. Though I’ve never gone too deep on Diddy the music mogul, I’m always sensitized to powerful man in entertainment, crossing personal and professional crimes, pulling entire company operations into his harmful behaviors, complicity of coworkers in covering and even aiding abuses….and this is on a massive scale.

Defending Diddy
The defense team reflects the massive resources at Diddy’s disposal (and, to their chagrin I’m sure, illustrates the capacity of the very enterprise in question to cover for any criminal behavior).
Defense attorneys, criminal defense: they’re essential elements of a judicial system striving towards fairness, and of our constitutional structure.

That said, Diddy’s defense strategy towards his alleged victims is dangerous and gratuitous: for the instant victims, and for victims at large in our culture and legal system. Some could argue that eviscerating victims’ characters and making arguments like “didn’t you really like it?” and “you didn’t leave…!” and “you’re a liar, aren’t you?” (an actual question asked by Diddy’s defense) are necessary to a zealous defense of an accused abuser. I think effective defense strategies don’t have to perpetuate dangerous cultural perspectives. In an attempted murder case, rarely do you hear defense attorneys grilling victims about why they were friends with the accused, why they smiled in security footage, and so on.

At different points, the defense has called Cassie & Diddy’s a “great American love story,” despite now-infamous footage of him beating and dragging her in a hotel for trying to leave a F/O. They’ve blithely, at best “accidentally” identified victim “Mia” with the content of their cross. They’ve characterized these F/Os-- where women were forced to perform for him without sleep for three days on end, fight through untreated UTIs and vomiting, where parties were drugged (sometimes without consent) and threatened with massive financial or reputational ruin if they withheld consent-- as one guy’s private kink. They’ve also called the victims’ testimony in this -criminal- trial, where testifying women were rewarded only with thousands of death threats, a “Me Too money grab.” It’s bitterly ironic, when that movement itself flounders under a presidency that defies its very premise (and a president who ‘would consider’ pardoning Diddy).

Closing the case

The defense didn’t call any witnesses. It’s an understandable legal strategy, given that positive character witnesses would have opened the door for the prosecution to bring in their own negative character witnesses (and thus cover every bad thing, unrelated, uncharged, etc. that Diddy’s ever done), but I wonder how the jury will take it. For example, I still think about the fact that in the Menendez Brothers’ trial, the prosecution couldn’t find one positive witness to speak positively of Jose Menendez’s character. Different circumstance, but a similar implication.

Charges and Sentencing

Diddy is charged with two violations of the Mann Act-- transportation of sex workers across state (or international) lines “for prostitution”-- each of which carry a max sentence of 10 years. The two charges are separated by time brackets (the first charge for the years 2009 to 2018, the second from 2019 to 2023). These are slam dunks. To give some perspective, the government’s closing included reminders and headshots of 27 sex workers which evidence had shown Diddy and co. hiring and flying to hotel nights. On its own, the Mann Act is a pretty dated crime to merit a twenty year (if consecutive) sentence…BUT, a Judge could easily sentence 20 if, say, the jury finds Diddy not guilty for the bigger crimes, and the Judge and public feel this is unjust.

He’s also charged with two counts of Sex Trafficking: one for ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, one for ex “Jane,” who was with him until the day of his arrest. Sex trafficking carries a max sentence of 15 years (x2). This charge is the most “political.” The federal crime is different to what Hollywood has painted for us as ‘trafficking.’ The critical piece (there are also jurisdictional and commercial requirements) is using force (or threats of force), fraud, or coercion to compel someone to engage in sex acts. Under the law, force/fraud/coercion doesn’t just mean physical force: it can mean n threats, psychological abuse, career or reputational harm, exchange for monetary value (like ‘Jane’s’ rent), and all of these paired with compromised mental states through sleep deprivation, illness (like untreated UTIs from F/Os), and drugs.

The defense, though, pushed back hard on the jury instructions detailing how force/fraud/coercion could mitigate “consent” in the moment. Their proposed instructions told the jury to focus on a binary, between overt physical force and “consent” (as not saying ‘no’ in videos). Thus, the politicization.

RICO was first used on mob bosses, as a way to hold organization leaders accountable even if they instructed organizational underlings to commit crimes for them (keeping their own hands technically clean). Recently, the statute-- which targets those who use an organization, enterprise, or business structure to aid in committing crimes-- has been used to prosecute a different kind of powerful man. Its (successful) use against R. Kelly and NXIVM’s Keith Raniere represented a new RICO-defendant prototype: men at the head of “cults of personality” (fandoms, corporations supporting entertainers, and church/self-help groups) who are aided by a whole organization of employee-enablers.
Will this relatively new strategy work on Sean Combs? His case is similar to R. Kelly’s, but without evidence of minor victims or videos of unconscious partners. We know this is no less diabolical, no less criminal, and that shock value of admissible evidence is unrelated to guilt-- but do juries? Who knows?

For a racketeering conspiracy conviction, the feds needed to show a “pattern” (two or more) of “predicate crimes” (crimes committed by D’s organizational employees for his benefit). That means the prosecution didn’t just have to connect acts to Diddy’s personal company (Love Corp. or something-- his assistants, chief of staff, security etc.), but they have to prove at least two predicate crimes to show the racketeering crime itself.

Some examples that the prosecution brought out: bribery (paying a hotel security guard for the video tape of Diddy beating Cassie), extortion (getting Cassie’s mom to take out a second mortgage under threat of releasing her nude videos), arson (firebombing Kid Cudi’s car after he began dating Cassie), narcotics distribution (shown through multiple former assistants and the FBI agent who raided Combs’ home), forced labor (preventing assistant ‘Mia’ from going home or to the restroom, keeping women awake and performing at F/Os for days on end), and kidnapping (interrogating assistant Capricorn Clark in an abandoned building under death threats, preventing Cassie from leaving F/Os on video).

Right before closing statements, prosecutors withdrew Kid Cudi’s arson and kidnapping of Capricorn Clark from the charging document as predicate crimes. That meant that they didn’t feel they’d adequately proved those to a criminal standard. But that list^ shows that there are plenty of predicate crimes left. They just need two.

Racketeering conspiracy carries a max sentence of thirty years-- or more, depending on the max for any proven predicate crimes. In Diddy’s case, that brings the potential max racketeering sentence to life in prison.

I know better than to predict how the jury will behave. The sentencing brackets, though, mean that Combs could easily spend the rest of his life in prison (even without being found guilty on all counts). He’s 55 years old, with a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse behind him. “Jane” even testified to his jaundiced eyes and gray gums after F/Os. He clearly has not learned to care for himself in a healthy way, and prison time would mean losing the organization designed to support and sustain his un-wellness. Even 25 years-- a fraction of the maximum possible-- could mean “life.”

Any significant sentence will definitely mean appeals, but Combs has relied on a hefty legal team to get here. Ten of the country’s best disgraced-mogul-defense lawyers are at his trial table. Can you imagine the billable hours for even one?! Some of his crimes can also merit monetary sentences (like fines), and that’s to say nothing of the -dozens- of civil suits still pending against him. Last week saw him named in yet another case, a gang-rape claim against him and his son, Justin Combs.

So, ultimately, how long can he keep this up?

We shall see. Be well, and enjoy every sandwich.