4 days ago
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Jury successful Sean "Diddy" Combs proceedings acceptable to statesman deliberations
Jurors started deliberating Monday successful Sean "Diddy" Combs' enactment trafficking case, weighing charges that could enactment the hip-hop mogul successful situation for life.
Judge Arun Subramanian began speechmaking instructions connected the instrumentality connected Monday greeting to the assemblage of 8 men and 4 women. Now, they'll sift done 7 weeks of sometimes graphic and affectional grounds astir the rap, manner and world TV impresario's propensity for unit and his intersexual predilections, including drug-fueled enactment marathons dubbed "freak-offs" oregon "hotel nights."
Combs, 55, has pleaded not blameworthy to national charges of racketeering conspiracy, 2 counts of enactment trafficking — relating to 2 of his ex-girlfriends — and 2 counts of proscription to prosecute successful prostitution for allegedly arranging to alert enactment workers crossed authorities lines.
CBS News ineligible contributor Caroline Polisi, a transgression defence attorney, said the prosecution's champion accidental astatine getting a condemnation could beryllium with the enactment trafficking charges.
"The prosecution made wide determination lone has to beryllium 1 instance, retired of these hundreds of 'freak-offs,' 1 lawsuit wherever it was coerced by force, fraud oregon coercion, and that tin see threats of harm that doesn't adjacent see carnal harm," Polisi said. "So that tin see fearfulness of fiscal harm, fearfulness of reputational harm. Remember, helium videotaped each of these encounters, and the authorities laid retired circumstantial instances wherever helium threatened to merchandise those tapes."
In closing arguments past week, national prosecutors and Combs' defence squad took their past shots astatine convincing jurors to convict oregon acquit the Grammy Award-winning laminitis of Bad Boy Records.
"The suspect utilized power, unit and fearfulness to get what helium wanted," Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik said. "He thought that his fame, wealthiness and powerfulness enactment him supra the law."
She said that helium utilized his "close interior ellipse and a tiny service of idiosyncratic staff, who made it their ngo to conscionable the defendant's each desire, beforehand his powerfulness and support his estimation astatine each costs."
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo countered, "This isn't astir crime. It's astir money." He noted that 1 of Combs' accusers successful the transgression lawsuit besides sued him successful civilian court.
"He is not a racketeer. He is not a conspirator to perpetrate racketeering. He is nary of these things. He is innocent. He sits determination innocent. Return him to his family, who person been waiting for him," the lawyer told jurors.
In all, 34 witnesses testified, headlined by Combs' erstwhile girlfriends Cassie — the R&B vocalist calved Casandra Ventura — and "Jane," who testified nether a pseudonym. Both women said helium often was convulsive toward them. Cassie said helium forced her into hundreds of intersexual encounters with paid antheral enactment workers portion Jane recounted galore "hotel nights."
Jurors besides saw now-infamous information camera video of Combs beating, kicking and dragging Cassie astatine a Los Angeles edifice successful 2016 and clips from videos of intersexual encounters.
Combs chose not to testify, and his lawyers didn't telephone immoderate witnesses successful their defence case. His attorneys elected alternatively to situation the accusers' credibility during lengthy cross-examination questioning.
The defence has acknowledged that Combs veered into violence, but his lawyers support that the enactment acts were consensual. They contend that prosecutors are intruding successful Combs' idiosyncratic beingness and that he's done thing to warrant the charges against him.
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