Why the Sean Combs trial is about greater than ‘Diddy vs. Cassie’ : NPR

Advisory: This report accommodates descriptions of bodily and sexual violence.

Over its first two weeks, the highest-profile witness to testify within the prison trial of hip-hop tycoon Sean Combs has been his ex-girlfriend, singer and mannequin Cassie Ventura. In often-intense moments on the stand, she advised the jury that he raped and abused her. Consequently, the media consideration and on-line chatter about this trial up to now has steadily been framed as “Diddy vs. Cassie.”

And if individuals know only one factor concerning the relationship between Combs and Ventura, it is in all probability a broadly seen video by which he will be seen attacking her in a California resort in 2016. Combs was seen kicking and dragging her, and throwing a vase at her — footage that has been key proof up to now for prosecutors arguing that Combs used pressure and worry as a method of management. (After CNN aired that video in Might 2024, Combs revealed a video apology that has since been faraway from social media.)

The federal government’s case is about far more than simply the video.

As a result of it is a federal trial, with prices of racketeering, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution — all of which Combs has pleaded not responsible to — the prosecutors have a really explicit job.

“What they really want to indicate from a prosecution perspective is that there was a prison group in play right here that dedicated various unlawful acts over time,” says former prosecutor Jennifer Beidel. She now practices in Michigan as a authorities investigations and company compliance lawyer, used to work in the identical federal workplace that’s presently prosecuting Combs: the Southern District of New York.

“So merely discovering that Cassie Ventura was the topic of home violence, whereas that is clearly terrible and an important factor from a state courtroom stage, would not fulfill the federal normal,” she says.

What are the fees Combs faces?

Within the intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution prices, the federal government is accusing Combs of coercing ladies into collaborating in industrial intercourse acts with him and with male intercourse employees. He additionally allegedly organized for ladies and intercourse employees to be flown to him throughout state strains. That is a giant a part of what Cassie Ventura testified about. She mentioned she felt pressured to take part in Combs’ so-called “freak offs,” and that she couldn’t safely depart. Combs’ protection staff is arguing that Ventura selected to remain in a poisonous relationship. The federal government’s indictment consists of at the very least one different alleged sufferer who will testify towards Combs beneath a pseudonym.

Racketeering is essentially the most difficult cost to grasp. Jennifer Beidel says again within the day, the feds used to make use of racketeering prices — also referred to as RICO — to combat organized crime.

“RICO is historically a statute that was designed to prosecute the mob and different organizations that had been basically hiding their conduct by way of respectable organizations,” Beidel says. “RICO over time has been utilized extra broadly. Mob prosecutions had been fairly efficient, at the very least in New York, for instance, and there aren’t as many as we speak. So it is expanded into different areas the place you may need an in any other case respectable enterprise that can also be engaged in prison misconduct, and possibly utilizing that respectable enterprise to cover that prison misconduct.”

Prosecutors are arguing that whereas Sean Combs had a respectable enterprise empire — spanning music, clothes manufacturers, alcohol and media properties — he was utilizing these companies to gasoline and conceal prison actions. Consider this cost as being like cash laundering, however as an alternative of cash, Combs is accused of laundering actions. In response to the federal indictment, these included kidnapping, arson, bribery, pressured labor and abusing and coercing ladies. The opposite authorities witnesses who’ve testified about these alleged actions embrace the musician Scott Mescudi — higher often known as Child Cudi — who mentioned on the stand Thursday that he believes that Combs broke into his home and was concerned in setting hearth to his automotive after discovering out that Mescudi and Ventura had been courting.

Cassie Ventura’s story remains to be on the heart of the prosecution’s case

Beidel says the prosecution may need had no selection however to current Cassie Ventura as a witness very early on — she’s eight and a half months pregnant. However it might have a broader strategic profit as nicely, since Ventura was concerned with Combs for over a decade.

“Ventura covers a reasonably lengthy time-frame and big selection of conduct,” Beidel explains. “Any person who testifies in that means is far more comprehensible to a jury than whenever you placed on possibly 10 witnesses for a similar period of time, when every of them has one little nugget, and the jury has to place that collectively. So you’ve got form of a narrator to start out out with the place they’re getting the story of their head to some extent.”

The Southern District of New York has an especially excessive success fee for convictions — nicely above 90%. The jury has seen and heard proof together with the resort video, that’s viscerally affecting. However with prices as broad as those geared toward Combs, a giant query stays: Will the prosecution have the ability to persuade jurors that he was the pinnacle of a prison group? The courtroom estimates that the trial will proceed till late June at the very least.

This story consists of reporting by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento.