What Sean Combs Got Away With

New York Times

13 hours ago

The most haunting image of the Sean Combs trial for many of us will be the video of him, wearing a towel and striped socks, kicking and dragging a limp Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura down the hall of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. It's haunting on its own terms, witnessing such abuse. But it's also haunting now that the trial is over, knowing that Mr. Combs could not be convicted of that behavior, because of failures in our legal system.
On Wednesday, Mr. Combs was acquitted on the most serious charges against him: sex trafficking and racketeering. A jury convicted him on two counts of transporting people to engage in prostitution, for which he faces as many as 20 years in prison. But it seems likely that he will serve much less than that. The prosecutors are asking for about four to five years in prison, while Mr. Combs's attorneys are seeking less than two and a half.
That the hotel tape is not by itself enough to convict Mr. Combs — of something — speaks to the system's failures. When that video was released, prosecutors were subject to the statute of limitations for domestic violence in California. The time to prosecute Mr. Combs's evident violence had long since run out.
Mr. Combs's domestic abuse came up again and again in that trial — by the prosecutors, by the witnesses, and even by his own defense team. It came up so often, even in his lawyer's own closing argument — 'We own the domestic violence. I hope you guys know that.' — that it seemed to me practically a wink, a shrug, at Mr. Combs's documented abuse. How hard is it to own domestic violence with no charges?
Mr. Combs himself offered up a grossly inadequate apology once the tape became known. 'I make no excuses,' he said, and then went on to make excuses, saying he'd 'hit rock bottom' in his life. What is rock bottom, I wonder, for someone with hundreds of millions of dollars, a staff tending his every whim, multiple houses, all the benefits and trappings of fame, talent and power? And in any case, is 'rock bottom' ever a justification for violence?
There is also another more subtle, more sinister image that prosecutors tried and failed to get the jury to see: That video showed violence, yes, but, more importantly, it showed how a powerful man coerced and controlled a woman. But how were they to prove coercive control when text messages showed both Ms. Ventura and 'Jane,' who testified under a pseudonym, appearing to want to participate in the baby oil-fueled orgies called 'freak-offs,' which they even sometimes helped arrange? To the uninitiated, these women hardly sound coerced; they sound exactly like what Mr. Combs's lawyer, Teny Geragos, described: 'capable adults' making 'voluntary adult choices.'
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