Latest news with #defenseAttorney
CNN
02-07-2025
- CNN
Jury to continue deliberating in Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' trial - live updates
Update: Date: Title: Combs is in the courtroom Content: Sean 'Diddy' Combs has entered the courtroom. He looked at his family, nodded his head and flashed them a small smile. He is sitting in a chair, with head down and eyeglasses on. Update: Date: Title: Combs' mother and sister are in the courtroom Content: Sean 'Diddy' Combs lawyers are still meeting with him in private as we wait for the verdict to be read in court. Combs' mother and his sister are in the courtroom. Update: Date: Title: JUST IN: Jury in Sean "Diddy" Combs trial reaches verdict Content: A federal jury has reached a verdict in the racketeering and sex trafficking trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs, the hip-hop mogul accused of operating a criminal enterprise that coerced women into sexual encounters with other men known as 'Freak Offs.' Combs, 55, is charged with five counts: one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts each of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. If found guilty of the most serious charges, he could face up to life in prison. Update: Date: Title: Jury sends a note, according to defense attorney Content: The jury has sent a note, according to defense attorney Marc Agnifilo. This would be the first note of the day. Sean 'Diddy' Combs' supporters are filtering into the courtroom. Prosecutors also have arrived. Combs' defense team have left the courtroom and entered the side room where Combs is normally led out of. They're meeting with him in private. Update: Date: Title: Combs prays with family before heading downstairs to wait Content: In the courtroom, Sean 'Diddy' Combs turned to face his relatives and told them he was heading downstairs to wait. 'Stay strong,' he said, and bowed his head to pray. His children bowed their heads. In giving prayer, Combs said, 'God, please watch over my family.' He asked that the jurors his family be blessed. The family responded with 'amen' and clapped. After marshals escorted Combs out, his children stood to walk out. Everyone else in the courtroom also stood. When it was clear the judge wasn't on the bench, Combs' children and several members of the galley laughed, injecting a moment of levity into the courtroom. Update: Date: Title: Deliberations in the Combs trial resume Content: Sean 'Diddy' Combs has entered the courtroom. He hugged four of his attorneys — Jason Driscoll, Nicole Westmoreland, Alexandra Shapiro, and Marc Agnifilo — and waved to people in the gallery. Combs' mother and sister are seated in the family section. Combs is sitting alone at the defense table as his lawyers are standing in a circle off to the side. Combs' adult children arrived a little later. Two of the sons brought female friends, and the group squeezed 10 people into a row that normally fits eight. Update: Date: Title: Here's what the prosecution has to prove as Combs faces a racketeering conspiracy charge Content: Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. The judge has asked jurors to continue deliberating after they said they were unable to reach a verdict on count 1, which is racketeering conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, Combs could face up to life in prison. The federal government has used racketeering to go after a dozen college athletic figures and test administrators in the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted, former President Donald Trump and musicians like R. Kelly and Young Thug So, what exactly is racketeering? Simply put, racketeering means engaging in an illegal scheme. It's used in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, to describe 35 offenses, including kidnapping, murder, bribery, arson and extortion. Attorney G. Robert Blakey, who has helped draft racketeering laws in at least 22 states, told CNN racketeering is not a single criminal act. Prosecutors must prove a pattern involving at least two instances of racketeering activity to convict someone under the law. Racketeering is 'not a specific crime — it's a way of thinking about and prosecuting a variety of crimes,' Blakey said. According to the US Justice Department, to convict someone of racketeering, prosecutors must prove five different criteria: The minimum sentence for racketeering varies by jurisdiction and severity of the crime. Convicted racketeers can also face fines. Update: Date: Title: The jury has reached a verdict in 4 of 5 counts in Combs' federal criminal trial. Here's what you should know Content: The federal jury in Sean 'Diddy' Combs' trial reached a verdict on four of the five counts yesterday, after roughly 12 and a half hours of deliberation. The jury sent a note to Judge Arun Subramanian saying they did not reach a verdict on count 1, racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The judge instructed the jury to continue deliberating. The jury sent a note advising it will continue deliberations today. Here's what you should know: Update: Date: Title: What we know about the 12 jurors deciding the fate of Sean 'Diddy' Combs Content: A jury panel of eight men and four women, ranging in age from 30 to 74, is currently deliberating Combs' legal fate. Here's what we know about them:
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Yahoo
Defense rests case in Dan Serafini murder trial
Former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini's defense attorney finished making his case as to why he is not guilty of shooting and ambushing his in-laws at their Tahoe-area home.
Fox News
05-06-2025
- Fox News
Karen Read defense gets boost as plow driver testifies he saw no body in snow during Boston cop death case
Karen Read's lucky charm may be a plow driver who saw nothing during multiple passes by the address where she is accused of leaving her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, to die on the ground in a blizzard in January 2022. Brian "Lucky" Loughran testified Wednesday that he didn't see a body on the lawn as he cleared snow on the street in the hours after prosecutors allege the victim stopped moving. According to prosecution experts, O'Keefe's last known activity came to a stop around 12:30 a.m., and his body allegedly did not move until first responders arrived around 6 a.m. "I saw nothing," Loughran told defense attorney David Yannetti, speaking of his first pass around 2:45 a.m. He cleared that side of the block, turned around at the end and saw nothing again when he went back the other way. He testified that he passed by 34 Fairview Road, the home of Brian Albert where John O'Keefe was found dead in the snow, in both directions multiple times between 2:40 a.m. and around 6 a.m. Prosecutors allege Read hit her boyfriend outside and drove off, leaving him to die in blizzard conditions. Loughran said he had good visibility despite the blizzard conditions due to multiple lights on the plow truck and a high seat. Asked if he saw a body in the snow, he said he did not, but he added that he did see a Ford Edge SUV parked outside the address during a later pass around 3:30 a.m. "Loughran's adamance that there was nobody on the lawn after 2:30 a.m., one day after an active-duty officer was adamant that the taillight he saw before the [Massachusetts State Police] had it was not destroyed, are major blows to a prosecution case that already has had severe problems," said Mark Bederow, a New York City defense attorney closely following the case. Loughran said the Ford Edge stood out to him because he was from the area and knew the Albert family, and he said he had to maneuver around the vehicle as he cleared the road. "For as long as I can remember, they have never parked a vehicle in front of their house," Loughran testified. "They've always had enough ample parking in the driveway." Special prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Loughran during cross-examination about purported threats from an online blogger and inconsistencies in his timeline. Loughran said he never felt threatened by the blogger and denied having a bad memory when Brennan confronted him with multiple statements that offered different times for when the driver passed by Fairview Road. "Mr. Loughran was adamant that he was not intimidated or threatened in exchange for his testimony, which substantially favored Karen Read," said Bederow, who represents Aidan Kearney, the blogger known as "Turtleboy." Loughran now follows the blog but said he had met with a private investigator working for the defense before Kearney ever contacted him, but he added that he barely paid attention to the posts beforehand. "I did not know I was being required to testify a certain way," he said. "I was also, at the time, dealing with the loss of my wife. I was not paying any attention to any social media." Overall, he came off as sincere and sympathetic, according to Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts trial attorney who is following the case. "Lucky said, 'I was doing my job and I did not want the attention, I did not welcome the attention,'" she told Fox News Digital. "I'm sure some people in the courtroom wanted to give him a hug after he said, 'I wasn't paying attention to social media because my wife had died.'" Brennan played police dashcam video taken outside 34 Fairview Road that showed heavy snowfall and the distance between the house there and Cedarcrest Road, where a plow truck drove by multiple times in the background, in an attempt to illustrate for the jurors how far the nearest pass would have been from the lawn. Loughran agreed that some of the passes were him in the plow dubbed "Frankentruck," but he said he couldn't be sure at other moments. "Overall, great day for the defense," Edwards said. "I didn't think there was any big moment today, and Brennan didn't even cross Ms. Kolokithas." After Loughran's testimony, the defense called Karina Kolokithas, a friend of both O'Keefe and Read who saw them at the Waterfall Bar and Grille the night before his death. "One important piece of evidence from Ms. Kolokithas was that she did not perceive Karen Read to be so intoxicated," Edwards said. Kolokithas, who said she only drank water that night, testified that she spent nearly an hour talking with the defendant and did not feel that she seemed too drunk to drive. Kolokithas also testified that it seemed strange when Jennifer McCabe, a key witness in the case, pulled Read aside at the end of the night. "Jen went over to Karen, kind of put her arm around her, and she's like, 'Karen, you're coming with me. You're coming with me,'" Kolokithas testified. "And Karen's like, 'What? Where are we going?'" GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB That, combined with surveillance video from the bar, illustrates part of the defense's effort to sow reasonable doubt. "The defense is trying to develop possibilities, and they were trying to get the possibility that something was going on with John O'Keefe and the other men," Edwards said. Kolokithas discussed another interaction that stood out to her that night: O'Keefe kissing Read on the forehead. "I'd never seen something like that before; a boyfriend do [that] to a girlfriend in public," she said. "Never saw that, so it just stood out to me. I was like, 'Wow, that's the sweetest thing I've ever seen.'" That nugget could also boost the defense, Bederow said, after Read's team introduced evidence that ATF Agent Brian Higgins, another man at the bar that night, was exchanging flirtatious text messages with their client behind her boyfriend's back. "Kolokithas' description of John being affectionate with Karen right in front of Higgins minutes before Higgins seemingly was agitated towards John and had to be calmed down by Chris Albert, around the time Jen McCabe oddly told Karen she was leaving with her, was also helpful to the defense," he said. Surveillance video appeared to show Higgins and O'Keefe gesturing at one another from across the room shortly before the group left and headed to Brian Albert's house at 34 Fairview Road. There is no audio, and Kolokithas did not testify about an argument between the men. However, Chris Albert, Brian's brother, can be seen pushing Higgins' arms down during the exchange.
CBS News
30-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
What to expect from Alan Jackson in Karen Read's second trial
The Karen Read trial has garnered national attention, and one of the key figures in the case is defense attorney Alan Jackson. Here's what to know about Read's high-profile lead attorney as the prosecution has rested its case and the defense took over. The prosecution in Read's second trial rested on Thursday, handing the case over to the defense team made up of Jackson, David Yannetti, Bob Alessi and Elizabeth Little. Who is Alan Jackson? Jackson is a criminal defense attorney from the law firm Werksman Jackson & Quinn. A biography on the firm's website describes Jackson as "one of the country's most sought-after criminal defense attorneys." According to the firm, Jackson has tried more than 85 cases to a jury verdict, and has a 96% success rate. Jackson was the lead prosecutor for the Los Angeles Count District Attorney's office during the case against music producer Phil Spector, who was convicted of killing actress Lana Clarkson. "His client list reads like a who's who of Hollywood celebrities, NBA stars, billionaire CEOs, and foreign dignitaries—all turning to him for 'must-win' cases," Jackson's biography reads. Karen Read's lawyer Alan Jackson Prosecutors accuse Read of hitting and killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV after a night of drinking and leaving him to die in the snow. When Read was first arrested, her only attorney was Yannetti. In the recently released HBO documentary "A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read," Yannetti, Read and Jackson discussed how the defense team expanded. Yannetti said it became clear the case was going to require a lot of work. Read said in the documentary that she called the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute. A professor told her to look into actor Kevin Spacey's case on Nantucket, where he was accused of groping an 18-year-old. Jackson represented Spacey, and the felony charge of indecent assault and battery was eventually dropped. Read said she looked into the case, and that was how she learned about Jackson's work. "I got an email and the subject line of the email with something along the lines of 'Murder of a Boston Cop.' I took one look at the autopsy photos of John O'Keefe, and I saw his arm, and I said, 'Are you kidding me? He was hit by a car?'" Jackson recounted in the documentary. Read's attorneys have argued that injuries to O'Keefe's arm were caused by a dog during the alleged fight. With Jackson added to Read's defense team, the case began to garner national attention. Karen Read and attorney Alan Jackson look at the empty jury box while listening to Judge Cannone during Read's murder trial in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Mass., Wednesday, May 21, 2025. Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool What to expect from Alan Jackson WBZ-TV legal analyst Katherine Loftus noted that compared to Read's first trial, Jackson took a bit of a back seat during the prosecution's case in the retrial. Alessi, not Jackson, cross-examined several key witnesses. That included the medical examiner and several forensic experts. Loftus said she believes that will change during the defense's case, which Read told reporters will take 1.5 to 2 weeks compared to just two days the first time. "I think [Alan Jackson] is probably going to take the majority of the defense case," Loftus said. "They really have two potential ways they can go. We might know right off the bat as soon as we see who the first witness is whether they are going to go with what they did trial No. 1, which was this framing, third party, point the fingers. Or if they're really going to focus on the police, Michael Proctor, conflict of interest, substandard, you can't find her guilty." Karen Read trial Jackson and Read's legal team have not been allowed to speak publicly about the case since March 7. That's when Cannone approved a gag order in the case, applying to all attorneys from both sides. As a result, Read has served as a de facto spokesperson throughout her second trial. Regularly when court ends for the day, Read speaks to reporters while leaving Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham with her legal team. Inside the courtroom, Jackson has had several fiery exchanges with witnesses. In Read's first trial, Jackson had contentious exchanges with Brian Albert, Brian Higgins, Colin Albert, and Jennifer McCabe. Read's defense has argued these are some of the people at the center of an alleged attempt to frame Read for O'Keefe's death. Jackson has also clashed with Judge Beverly Cannone on several occasions since joining the case. During a March 2025 hearing ahead of Read's second trial, Cannone accused Jackson of making "repeated misrepresentations to the court." The judge met with Read and her attorneys privately during the hearing. Cannone decided not to revoke Jackson's credential to practice in Massachusetts, which he is required to have because he is an out-of-state lawyer. After that hearing, WBZ-TV's Kristina Rex asked Read outside court how she felt about her attorneys staying on the case. "Amazing. Amazing," Read said. "There's no other attorneys I'd rather have than my attorneys."
