Jurors partially deadlocked at Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' sex trafficking trial
In a note sent out after 4 p.m., the eight men and four women on the jury said they had decided on one count of sex trafficking, one count of racketeering and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. The note did not indicate what their verdict was on those counts.
The outstanding charge is a sex trafficking count tied to allegations by Combs' ex, Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura. Manhattan Federal Judge Arun Subramanian asked lawyers for the government and Combs' team to email him their proposals about what to do next. He said he could tell them to keep deliberating or accept a partial verdict.
Combs appeared shell-shocked in court and was seen dabbing his eyes after his attorneys received the note. The development came as a thunderstorm broke out amid darkening skies above the courthouse.
Earlier Tuesday, in a morning note, the jury asked to review the testimony of Ventura regarding Combs brutally assaulting her in March 2016 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles. Explosive footage of the assault shows Combs pummeling Ventura in a hallway, dragging her by the hair, kicking her while she curls up on the floor, and hurling a vase at her. Ventura on May 13 testified that the assault occurred after she tried to leave a 'freak-off' session after Combs punched her in the face.
Jurors also wanted to look back over Ventura's testimony regarding her interactions with Daniel Phillips, a former male revue performer, whom she and Phillips testified was hired multiple times to sleep with Ventura for Combs' sexual gratification between 2012 and 2013. The panel also asked to review Phillips' testimony, during which he said he was once directed to urinate on Ventura, that she was once so heavily drugged he could not sleep with her, and that the only time he communicated with her alone, she appeared 'terrified.' Phillips said he stopped meeting the couple after witnessing Combs physically assault Ventura.
The jury note also requested a review of accounts that Ventura shared about traveling with Combs to the Cannes Film Festival one year. In her testimony about the trip to the French film festival, Ventura said Combs had accused her of stealing his drugs and kicked her off his yacht without her shoes or her passport. After the tense trip, Ventura said she had swapped seats with someone on a commercial flight back to New York, but Combs switched them back. She said he spent the flight playing humiliating footage of her at freak-offs that she thought had been deleted, and then when they got back to the city, she felt she had no choice but to submit to another of the depraved events.
Combs, 55, could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He's pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office alleges Combs abused his notoriety and his wealth for two decades to sexually exploit women at weekly sex parties, directing them to perform sordid sex acts with a rotation of male escorts while high on his supply of drugs.
Prosecutors say members of Combs' Bad Boy Records empire helped organize the vile sessions and resorted to crimes like kidnapping, arson, witness tampering, and bribery to intimidate women into submission and terrorize anyone who threatened Combs' authority.
Combs, a New York native who launched the careers of iconic hip hop artists like the Notorious B.I.G., maintains that he never pressured women into sexual performances against their will, that he paid escorts for their time, not sex, and that his employees were not hired to commit crimes.
The trial continues Wednesday.
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After hearing detailed accounts of coerced sex, drug-fueled 'freak-off' parties, surveillance, beatings and emotional manipulation, many believed the case was a clear example of human trafficking. To them, the not-guilty verdict on trafficking charges felt like a miscarriage of justice. But while the jury held Combs accountable for significant crimes, it stopped short of classifying his conduct as trafficking. We don't know whether the jurors saw the behavior as trafficking but didn't find enough evidence – or whether they concluded it didn't meet the legal definition at all. What is clear is this: calling Combs' behavior trafficking under the TVPA would require expanding that law beyond its current meaning. And that expansion could carry real consequences – especially for the very victims trafficking laws were designed to protect. What is the Mann Act? The "White Slave Traffic Act," also known as the Mann Act, passed in 1910, makes it a federal crime to knowingly transport someone across state lines for the purpose of engaging in illegal sexual activity – including prostitution. In the past, it was misused to police sexual morality, but today it's applied more narrowly to cases involving interstate travel and sexual exploitation. In Combs' case, the jury found that he used his power and resources to transport women for illicit sexual purposes. But the Mann Act does not require proof of coercion, long-term control or systemic exploitation. It focuses on movement and intent – not the broader patterns of slavery-like domination or exploitation. By contrast, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), passed in 2000, was designed to combat what Congress called 'modern-day slavery.' It targets organized systems of commercial exploitation through force, fraud or coercion, and it typically involves traffickers who control nearly every aspect of a victim's life: housing, transportation, identification, finances and the ability to leave. That's not what the Combs case showed. The women involved reported trauma and coercion, but they retained housing, communication, financial resources and career opportunities. They were not legally or physically confined. There was no evidence of document confiscation, restriction of movement or the kind of isolation commonly seen in trafficking cases prosecuted under the TVPA. And that's not a loophole – it's the law doing what it's supposed to do by drawing difficult but necessary lines between different forms of harm. Opinion: Cassie's Diddy trial testimony shows sexual assault survivors how to take power back As one of the nation's preeminent human trafficking expert witnesses, I am familiar with those lines. I have testified in landmark trafficking cases from California to New York. My book, "Hidden in Plain Sight: America's Slaves of the New Millennium," is used to train law enforcement on trafficking identification nationwide. The TVPA was written to protect people whose entire lives are controlled by others – often in silence, often invisible. Expanding the law beyond that mission threatens to weaken its core. Abuse described in Diddy trail was real and criminal. But calling it trafficking doesn't help survivors. None of this minimizes what happened. The abuse described in the Combs case was real, harmful and criminal. But redefining it as trafficking – simply because other laws didn't offer a viable path to justice – doesn't help survivors. It undermines the integrity of the trafficking framework and could actually make it harder for victims of true trafficking to get the support and legal recognition they need. It's understandable why prosecutors turned to the TVPA. 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