After seven weeks of graphic and emotional testimony that gripped the nation, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s fate now rests in the hands of his peers.
On Monday, Southern District of New York Judge Arun Subramanian instructed the jury of eight men and four women on how to evaluate the federal charges levelled against the rap mogul: one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts each of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The first two charges carry maximum sentences of life in prison, while the prostitution accusations could put Combs away for up to 10 years.
Indeed, the government has brought a vast and complex case against Combs, but criminal defense attorney David Gelman expects the jurors to make quick work of it.
In fact, the former state prosecutor predicts that they may even return a lightning-fast verdict in a single day.
‘I don’t see how a jury is going to be able to convict Diddy on any of these charges,’ Gelman exclusively told the Daily Mail. ‘Not just one or two or three – any of them. The evidence is not there.’
‘Frankly, it’s an embarrassment, what the government did,’ said Gelman, asserting that they failed to prove the necessary elements of any of the five counts. And even the final days of the trial, said Gelman, played in the defense’s favor.
On Wednesday, the prosecution dropped claims that Combs was involved in arson and kidnapping. The allegations formed part of the racketeering conspiracy charge.
Rapper Scott Mescudi, known as Kid Cudi, testified that he believed that Combs had broken into his home and firebombed his Porsche in retaliation for a romantic relationship that he had with Combs’s former girlfriend Cassie Ventura.
Yet prosecutors offered no concrete proof to confirm Mescudi’s suspicions, said Gelman, and no charges were ever filed to police.
In dropping the claims, prosecutors claimed that they were respecting ‘the Court’s desire for streamlined instructions.’
Gelman predicts the jurors will see it very differently.
‘The jury is going to be pissed off,’ said Gelman. ‘Why bring these charges to begin with? The government should have known the charges were weak, so why waste the jury’s time for multiple weeks? Jurors are not dumb and will definitely be thinking that.’
Gelman also noted that the prosecutors had at least one witness, identified as Gina, Victim Three in the indictment, drop out at the last moment. Another key figure, Kristina Khorram, Combs’s chief of staff and ‘right hand’, was conspicuously absent, giving rise to public suspicion that she too refused to testify.
Now, as the drama moves from the public eye to the jury room, Gelman reveals how the jurors will likely make their decisions.
Judge Subramanian has delivered detailed instructions to the jurors, outlining the specific elements of each alleged crime that they must conclude were proven beyond a reasonable doubt for a guilty verdict to be reached.
The most straightforward of the charges, Gellman believes, are the prostitution counts – allegedly hiring sex workers and paying them to travel across state lines for their services.
Two male escorts, Daniel Phillip and Sharay Hayes, the latter known professionally as The Punisher, have testified that they had been paid to travel from one state to another for sexual services. But even that charge against Diddy was not an open-and-shut case, according to Gelman.
‘They don’t have [evidence of] Diddy actually making calls and paying the prostitutes,’ he said. ‘They have evidence that [Comb’s former girlfriend] Cassie Ventura and other individuals working for Diddy set this up. So, to say beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Diddy is a bridge going way too far.’
Regarding the sex trafficking charge, Gelman said the jurors will be told to consult the judge’s instructions, which will specify that to find Combs guilty they’ll have to determine that the victims were taken against their will to locations for sex.
‘The prosecutors would need to show that they were all unwilling participants,’ Gelman explained, ‘I don’t see any force or coercion anywhere. People were paid but were doing this on their own free will.’
The defense presented text messages between Combs and his ex-girlfriends (one only identified as ‘Jane’ and Cassie Ventura), in which they appeared to profess their love for him and happiness at spending time together.
Gelman said Ventura, sympathetic and heavily pregnant with her third child while on the witness stand, was the most powerful witness for the prosecution, but even she, in his opinion, failed to pin the charges on her ex.
Finally, the racketeering conspiracy, or RICO, is the most complex count, Gelman said.
RICO is most commonly used against mobsters and cartel kingpins. The question is whether the jurors will conclude that Diddy was masterminding these alleged crimes through his record label, ‘Bad Boy Entertainment.’
Gellman believes the jurors, or at least some of them, will struggle to put this on Combs – and Combs alone.
‘All these sex parties, these ‘freak offs’ that they had, Diddy was all for it, but did he facilitate any of them? Nope, none of them to my mind,’ he said.
‘Nobody has any proof that he facilitated one single sex party. And sex parties are not illegal. You have a bunch of consenting adults doing sexual activities. It may not be the flavor of the month for everybody, but there’s nothing illegal about it.’
It was the prosecution’s final opportunity to make the charges stick during closing arguments on Thursday.
Christy Slavik, one of eight women on the all-female prosecution team, spoke for almost five hours, detailing all the allegations and accusing Combs of being the head of a criminal organization that ‘used violence and fear to get what he wanted.’
Some members of the jury were listening intently and taking notes, while others appeared to be on the verge of falling asleep.
Slavik called on the jury to ‘use your common sense’ – insisting they didn’t need to conclude that Combs himself carried out the crimes himself, but that he ordered them, adding, ‘up until today, the defendant was able to get away with these crimes because of his money, his power, his influence. That stops now. It’s time to hold him accountable.’
On Friday, it was the turn of Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo to offer a rebuttal.
Agnifilo said the case was about money, not criminal activity, and noted that none of the accusers alerted police.
‘They do call somebody though, they call civil plaintiffs lawyers,’ said Agnifilo. ‘That’s why we’re here. We’re here because of money.’
Gelman believes that was a particularly effective closing.
‘The theme of it being a ‘fake trial’, and all about money, was really powerful,’ he said. ‘If this were a state case and he was charged with domestic violence and assault and battery he’d be guilty any day,’ added Gelman, ‘but that’s not what he was charged with.’
According to Gelman, Combs wasn’t simply ‘overcharged’ but that he ‘shouldn’t have charged him at all.’
Now, it is up for the jury to decide.