Aurelia Butler

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ms. Ventura, said, “He’s finally been held responsible for two federal crimes, something that he’s never faced in his life.”A lawyer for Casandra Ventura, the star witness in the federal trial against Sean Combs, said he was “pleased” that Mr. Combs had been “held accountable for something.”The jury in the case handed down a mixed verdict on Wednesday, finding Mr. Combs not guilty of federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, the most serious charges against him, both of which carry a possible life sentence. But it convicted him of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — violations of the Mann Act — after an eight-week trial. Mr. Combs, who will be sentenced at a later date, and his lawyers were elated in court when the verdict was read.Outside the courthouse, Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ms. Ventura, said: “He’s finally been held responsible for two federal crimes, something that he’s never faced in his life.”Women’s advocacy groups and organizations that fight sexual violence praised the women who came forward to testify in the Sean Combs trial but expressed disappointment in the verdict.Advocacy groups had been closely following the deliberations, and they swiftly reacted to the verdict. Most expressed disappointment while praising the two former girlfriends of Mr. Combs’s — Ms. Ventura and a woman known in court as “Jane” — who came forward to tell their stories in often excruciating and lurid detail. Both testified that Mr. Combs had used violence and financial leverage to coerce them into having sex with male escorts.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.” She called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Two of Mr. Combs’s former girlfriends gave days of harrowing testimony of abuse, but jurors weren’t convinced those experiences with escorts were sex trafficking.Over a combined 10 days, two of Sean Combs’s girlfriends told a jury about some of the most harrowing moments of their lives.The women, Casandra Ventura and a woman known in court by the pseudonym “Jane,” testified about their affection for Mr. Combs, but also the myriad ways they said he abused them physically, emotionally and sexually. There was what they called drug-dazed sex with strangers in hotel rooms. Violent arguments. Physical abuse. And not-so-subtle reminders about who paid the rent.Their testimony, however, was ultimately not persuasive to the jurors who were asked to consider whether Mr. Combs had coerced Ms. Ventura or Jane into the extended sex sessions with male escorts that he called “freak-offs.”When Mr. Combs and his lawyers learned on Wednesday that he was not criminally responsible for sex trafficking or racketeering conspiracy, they were exuberant. There were gasps and tears filled with joy and relief.Ms. Ventura’s and Jane’s reactions to the same verdict happened out of the public eye.But some leaders of women’s advocacy groups and organizations that fight sexual violence called it a rollback on the progress that has been made in holding men accountable when they take advantage of women.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” and called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

For decades, he occupied a special stripe of the celebrity stratosphere. Now the man who helped turn rap into a global concern has escaped a sex-trafficking conviction.For the last two months, Sean Combs — once the most powerful executive in hip-hop, and one of the most recognizable global avatars of American cool — had been reframed as a full-time defendant.Facing trial in federal court on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transporting people for prostitution, he seemed diminished — a powerful man brought low by those he had allegedly harmed, an avatar of how even the loftiest realms of celebrity might not offer a buffer against accountability. It appeared as if Combs’s life, his career, his public image would forever be changed. That his career had reached a cul-de-sac of his own making.On Wednesday, though, Combs was found not guilty on all charges apart from transportation to engage in prostitution, the least serious of them.If the time since late 2023 — when Combs’s ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura (the singer Cassie) filed a civil suit against him, which he settled in one day — has prophesied a fall from grace for Combs, Wednesday’s verdict demonstrated the opposite: that even several weeks of grim testimony from his intimates, employees and others about how he flaunted power and resources to bend them to his will was not compelling enough to completely knock him from his perch.Combs largely escaped the fate of some other high-profile entertainment figures who have been held accountable in the #MeToo era. Had he been convicted across the board, he likely would have faced a full reputational shattering like Harvey Weinstein, once the most powerful man in film, who has been imprisoned on federal sex crimes since 2020. Or R. Kelly, once R&B’s most formidable and popular star, who has been in prison since 2022 on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges. Combs would have been a villain who once was famous, not the other way around.Instead, it’s possible that these charges and this trial might end up being viewed as a blemish on his résumé, another tragedy that registered only as a speed bump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The law, passed in 1910, prohibits the interstate or foreign transportation of an individual for sex. It has at times been used as a tool for political persecution.Sean Combs on Wednesday was cleared of some of the most serious charges against him — racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking — but still faces sentencing on two counts of transportation for prostitution under the Mann Act.The mixed verdict is seen as a victory for Mr. Combs, who faced a possible life sentence had he been convicted of any of the other counts. He could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison on the transportation for prostitution charges — 10 years for each count — but the final sentence will be up to a judge. As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, a sentencing date has not been announced.The Mann Act was passed in 1910 to prohibit the interstate or foreign transportation of an individual with the intention of engaging them in prostitution or any sexual activity. Initially referred to as the “White-Slave Traffic Act,” the federal statute came at a time when the United States saw rapid changes after the Industrial Revolution, including urbanization and immigration as young, single women moved to cities.As young women experienced greater sexual freedom, public anxiety grew over fear that there existed a “white slavery” plague in which innocent girls were drugged and smuggled across the country to engage in sexual activity.The law soon became a way for federal prosecutors to criminalize many forms of consensual sexual activity, including premarital, extramarital and interracial sexual relationships that involved interstate travel.Jack Johnson, the Black heavyweight boxing champion, was first prosecuted under the Mann Act in 1912 on charges of abducting a 19-year-old woman he had a relationship with. She refused to testify, dooming the case, and later married him. The following year, an all-white jury convicted Mr. Johnson of transporting a different woman across state lines “for immoral purposes.” Mr. Johnson had been a lover of that woman, who was white and had worked as a prostitute. President Trump pardoned Mr. Johnson posthumously in 2018.The Mann Act has also been used a tool for political persecution, targeting notable figures like the actor Charlie Chaplin, who was ultimately acquitted, and the singer Chuck Berry, who served more than a year in federal prison.Mr. Combs’s lawyers filed a motion in February to seek the dismissal of one of the sex-trafficking charges, arguing that he was being unfairly prosecuted based on his race. They pointed to the law’s “racist origins” and argued that it was being used against a “prominent Black man.”The act has been amended over the years to protect minors against child pornography, include the transportation of men in its coverage and address its misuse against consensual sex. A 1986 amendment replaced “immoral purpose” with “any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” More

Judge Arun Subramanian can consider federal guidelines and aspects of the music mogul’s character and history when determining Mr. Combs’s sentence.Though Sean Combs was acquitted on Wednesday of the most serious charges in his federal trial, he still faces the possibility of prison time because the jury found him guilty of two counts of transporting people to engage in prostitution.Sentencing experts say it is difficult to predict how severe his punishment will be, as the judge in the case must go through complicated calculus to determine a just outcome.A sentencing date has not yet been set. Each of the two transportation for prostitution convictions carries up to 10 years in prison, creating a maximum of 20 years if those sentences are served consecutively. But there are several reasons to think Mr. Combs’s sentence could be considerably shorter than that, experts said.“Judges almost never come close to” the maximum sentences, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.The judge in the trial, Arun Subramanian, will likely start by considering federal sentencing guidelines, rubrics which are used to create a penalty range based on various factors, including the nature of the offense, specifics of the case and personal characteristics of the defendant, like criminal history.Nationally, judges stuck to the sentencing guidelines in 67 percent of cases in the fiscal year 2024. But judges in the Southern District of New York imposed sentences within the guidelines just 34.5 percent of the time, almost always imposing shorter sentences than the guidelines suggested.Mr. Richman said the judge has wide latitude to consider what a reasonable sentence would be.“When making that decision he can consider the guidelines, especially since he just calculated them, but he can consider many other things and need not follow the guidelines,” he said.Douglas Berman, a sentencing expert at Ohio State University, said that even if judges do not stick to sentencing guidelines, they are often still used as a benchmark. Judges generally don’t want to stray too far from established norms, he said.Mr. Berman said every aspect of the defendant’s character and history — his charity work, his professional success, his threat to others, any bad behavior — can be taken into account.“There really are no limits to what the judge can consider,” he said.That also extends to evidence presented at trial regarding the counts on which Mr. Combs was acquitted, if the judge deems it relevant to the sentencing. Judges must weigh, among other things, whether the defendant is likely to commit a crime again.In the courtroom on Wednesday, Mr. Combs appeared to treat the verdict as a victory, pumping his fist in celebration and thanking jurors. Mr. Berman said that “how much of a win will really turn on how aggressive prosecutors are in their sentencing recommendations,” which he said can often influence judges. More