Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who crafted a business empire around his personal brand, was convicted on Wednesday of transporting prostitutes to participate in his drug-fueled sex marathons, but acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, the most serious charges against him.
Though Mr. Combs, 55, still faces a potential sentence of as much as 20 years in prison, he and his lawyers were jubilant after the acquittals on the more severe charges in an indictment that accused the famed producer of coercing women into unwanted sex with male prostitutes, aided by a team of pliant employees.
Mr. Combs had faced a possible life sentence. Under the transportation charges, set by the federal Mann Act, each of the two convictions carries a maximum term of 10 years, and the judge could set lesser sentences to run concurrently.
After the verdict was read in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Combs put his hands together and mouthed “thank you, thank you” at the jury of eight men and four women. Later, he dropped to his knees, apparently in prayer, and started a round of applause. His supporters and family began clapping and whistling for his legal team, who embraced one another at the conclusion of the eight-week trial.
“Mr. Combs has been given his life by this jury,” Marc Agnifilo, Mr. Combs’s lead lawyer, said in court following the verdict.
The mood slumped hours later when Judge Arun Subramanian ordered Mr. Combs, who has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his September 2024 arrest, back to jail until his sentencing, which is still unscheduled. Mr. Combs’s lawyers had sought their client’s release so he could return to his family in the interim.
Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who represents Casandra Ventura, a former girlfriend who testified that she had been abused by Mr. Combs, had written the court to object to the release. “Ms. Ventura believes that Mr. Combs is likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including herself,” he said.
The government’s case, which drew blanket news coverage and attracted an extraordinary degree of attention and commentary on social media, accused Mr. Combs of years of physical and emotional abuse.
Prosecutors argued that he had coerced two women to take part in sexual marathons with hired men, fueled by drugs and sometimes lasting days, which Mr. Combs would direct and sometimes film. According to the government, the two women at the heart of the case, who had been in yearslong romantic relationships with the executive, took part in the sexual encounters in part out of fear that Mr. Combs would beat them, revoke financial support or humiliate them by leaking explicit sex tapes.
But Mr. Combs long maintained his innocence, and his lawyers argued that his sexual arrangements were consensual, even as they admitted that he had been violent with the women.
At trial, Mr. Combs’s lawyers challenged the government’s narrative about the two women: Ms. Ventura, a singer known as Cassie, and a woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane.” They presented troves of text messages between Mr. Combs and each of his former girlfriends in which the women sometimes appeared willing and even excited about taking part in the sex sessions, undercutting the government’s argument that the women had been coerced.
The defense also chipped away at the government’s characterization of his employees as being part of a criminal organization, arguing that the various assistants and bodyguards prosecutors had pointed to were simply doing their jobs, and were not part of a nefarious conspiracy.
Federal officials did not comment on the specifics of the verdict but defended their decision to bring the charges in a case that the defense had mocked as an effort to criminalize private, consensual sexual conduct.
“Sex crimes deeply scar victims, and the disturbing reality is that sex crimes are all too present in many aspects of our society,” said a statement released by Jay Clayton, interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ricky J. Patel, special agent in charge of the New York field office of Homeland Security Investigations.
“New Yorkers and all Americans want this scourge stopped and perpetrators brought to justice,” the statement continued.
Organizations that advocate for women’s rights and seek to curb sexual violence were disturbed by the verdict and expressed a range of reactions, from disappointment to outrage. Some viewed it as a setback to the progress made in recent years in holding abusive men to account.
Arisha Hatch, the interim executive director of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, condemned the verdict as “a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers like Diddy,” using a nickname for Mr. Combs. She called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”
Long celebrated as a visionary music executive, Mr. Combs played a pivotal role in making hip-hop a global pop force, and his Gatsbyesque penchant for spectacle turned him into a pop culture icon and a tabloid fixture. But Mr. Combs had his legacy upended in 2023 by a lawsuit filed by Ms. Ventura, who was once a singer on his record label.
The lawsuit accused him of raping and physically assaulting Ms. Ventura, and of coercing her into highly orchestrated, drug-dazed sexual encounters with hired men, an accusation that introduced the term “freak-offs” into the public lexicon. Mr. Combs quickly settled the suit — for $20 million, Ms. Ventura testified — but it precipitated a criminal investigation into his conduct.
Ms. Ventura was the star witness in a case that centered on sex, wealth and power, as prosecutors put forward a narrative of a commanding executive who deployed underlings to fulfill his every desire and guard his reputation.
Using a federal law written to target organized crime syndicates like the Mafia, prosecutors portrayed Mr. Combs as the kingpin of a racketeering conspiracy made up of a rotating set of employees who helped him commit crimes. The core of the government’s case relied on accounts of nights of sex and drugs in hotels across the country, which Ms. Ventura and Jane said often involved men hired through escort services who were flown in for their gatherings.
Party drugs such as Ecstasy or MDMA were hallmarks of the events, sometimes known as “hotel nights” or “wild king nights,” the women said, as were copious amounts of baby oil. Mr. Combs would direct them to apply the lubricant on their bodies and have sex with the male prostitutes as he watched. During the trial, jurors saw video clips of the sexual encounters, though the contents were hidden from public view.
Pointing to that evidence, Mr. Combs’s team of nine lawyers argued that the government’s case was an overreach. Though they admitted that Mr. Combs was responsible for domestic violence against Ms. Ventura, which the judge cited in his decision to deny bail, they said that the violence did not amount to sex trafficking.
“He did what he did,” Mr. Agnifilo said in his closing argument last week. “But he’s going to fight to the death to defend himself on what he didn’t do.”
Prosecutors called 34 witnesses over 28 days. Mr. Combs did not take the stand and the defense rested after 25 minutes, after making the bulk of its case through vigorous cross-examination of witnesses. In a closing statement dripping with sarcasm, Mr. Agnifilo appealed to the jury’s emotions in casting Mr. Combs as a successful but flawed man whose sex life was unconventional, but not criminal.
In particular the defense took aim at the intensity of the law enforcement effort brought to bear against Mr. Combs, whose homes in Miami Beach, Fla., and Los Angeles were raided by what the lawyers called “a gross overuse of military-level force.” They seized weaponry and illicit drugs, but also lubricants that Mr. Combs used during sex acts.
“Thank goodness for the Special Response Team,” Mr. Agnifilo told the jury. “They found the baby oil.”
The success of that approach was considerable given the impact of the emotional testimony the jury heard from Ms. Ventura and Jane, who described a pattern of manipulation and control that led them to repeatedly appease the music mogul, even though sex with male escorts often left them feeling disgusted and used, and frequently suffering from urinary tract infections.
“He brought the concept to me when I was 22, and I would do absolutely anything for him and I did,” Ms. Ventura testified. “And it never stopped our whole relationship. And it was expected of me, and it made me feel horrible about myself.”
Ms. Ventura recounted beatings at the hands of Mr. Combs that gave her black eyes, a swollen face and bruises on her body.
Several times, jurors watched security footage of Mr. Combs, wearing only a towel and socks, brutally beating Ms. Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. She did not report the assault at the time, and by the time the footage became public, the statute of limitations had expired.
Much of the prosecution’s case tracked with the allegations of Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, but it also expanded to encompass two other women with accounts of sexual abuse. One woman, who was known in court by the pseudonym “Mia,” said Mr. Combs sexually assaulted her multiple times while she was working as his personal assistant.
The biggest revelation at the trial was the story of Jane, a social media influencer who began to date Mr. Combs in secret in 2021. During more than 24 hours of testimony, Jane said she agreed to the extreme sexual demands because she wanted to please her boyfriend, but she eventually felt obligated to continue out of fear that Mr. Combs would stop paying the $10,000 monthly rent for the home where she lives with her child.
Jane recalled feeling stunned by the similarities when she read Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit in 2023, texting Mr. Combs at the time, “I feel like I’m reading my own sexual trauma.”
They briefly broke up but soon got back together, with Mr. Combs under criminal investigation and facing a mounting number of civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse.
“He’s just so good at showering me with love and affection, with all the sexual exploitation in between, and then showering me with love and affection,” Jane testified.
She could not be reached for comment after the verdict. Ms. Ventura’s lawyer, Mr. Wigdor, said: “We’re pleased that he’s finally been held responsible for two federal crimes, something that he’s never faced in his life. He still faces substantial jail time.”
In addition to the prison time, Mr. Combs faces dozens of lawsuits in which other women and men have accused him of sexual abuse stretching back years. He has denied those accusations as well.
Anusha Bayya, Olivia Bensimon and Michaela Towfighi contributed reporting.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
