Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' winning defence: He's abusive, but he's not a racketeer
On July 2, Combs was found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy – the two most severe charges against him.
NEW YORK - Over 28 days of testimony, federal prosecutors called witnesses who gave compelling accounts of harrowing violence, acts of intimidation and voyeuristic sex in hotel rooms with oceans of baby oil.
Sean Combs, they said, was the ringleader.
Investigators detailed for the jury raids at Combs' mansions in Miami Beach, Florida, and Los Angeles, where they carted away several AR-15-style guns and illicit narcotics.
People who worked for Combs, the music mogul known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, testified that they had procured drugs for him or had witnessed his physical abuse of a former girlfriend.
In the face of this evidence, the defence presented a case that lasted less than half an hour. Combs declined to testify, and no other witnesses were called. The rapid turnaround was startling after six weeks of trial.
But in retrospect, the defence's compact case was a sign that Combs' lawyers felt confident the government had not done enough to convince a federal jury that Combs was, as charged, the boss of a criminal enterprise.
'We take full responsibility that there was domestic violence in this case,' Ms Teny Geragos, one of Combs' lawyers, said on the first day of the trial. But the defence vehemently rejected the idea that the violence was used to compel women into sex acts.
On July 2, Combs was found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy – the two most severe charges against him.
While Combs' convictions on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution could result in his spending years in prison, sex-trafficking or racketeering convictions would have carried potential life sentences.
The racketeering conspiracy statute under which Combs was charged was designed to combat organised crime syndicates such as the Mafia, though it has been expanded into cases involving sexual offenses, as with R. Kelly and cult leader Keith Raniere.
To prove its racketeering conspiracy charge, the government had to persuade jurors that Combs was part of a criminal enterprise – one that had a structure that continued over time, that had committed crimes and that was not a casual assortment of people who knew one another, but rather a grouping that shared a mission. NYTIMES
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