Sean Combs on 7 May 2018, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (Angela Weiss / AFP)
Joel Ontong
- Jury selection begins Monday in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal trial for sex trafficking and racketeering in New York.
- Prosecutors allege Combs led a coercive crime ring; he denies all charges, maintaining encounters were consensual.
- If convicted, the music mogul could face life imprisonment in a high-profile case drawing #MeToo era scrutiny in the music industry.
Jury selection is set to begin Monday in New York in the blockbuster trial of music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who dramatically fell from grace following his incarceration on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
Combs, 55, has been awaiting his day in court since last year on accusations of leading a crime ring that prosecutors say coerced victims into drug-fuelled sex parties using threats and violence.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to all charges, insisting that any sex acts were consensual. At a recent hearing, his attorney, Marc Agnifilo, offered a preview of his team’s defence by describing the artist’s free-wheeling “swinger” lifestyle.
The prosecution said in court that it had offered Combs a plea deal-the specifics were not disclosed-but that he had rejected it.
If convicted, the one-time rap producer and global superstar, who is often credited for his role in ushering hip-hop into the mainstream, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Over the decades, the artist-who has gone by various stage names, including Puff Daddy and P Diddy-has amassed vast wealth not only for his work in music but also for his ventures in the liquor industry.
READ | Sean Combs, the rap mogul facing a web of sex crime allegations
The jury selection start date is notably the first Monday in May – which annually marks New York’s Met Gala, a glittering celebrity charity bash where Combs was once a red carpet mainstay.
Just two years ago, he posed for the cameras at that event uptown-but on Monday, he will be in federal court downtown as the panel of citizens tasked with determining his fate faces a barrage of questions from lawyers on both sides.
Sean Diddy Combs leaves The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on 1 May 2023 in New York City. (James Devaney/GC Images)
Jury selection is expected to wrap up in about a week, with opening statements tentatively scheduled for 12 May.
Combs was arrested by federal agents in New York in September 2024 and denied bail multiple times.
He is being held at Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, a facility plagued by complaints of vermin and decay as well as violence.
High-profile inmates there included disgraced R&B star R. Kelly, Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur convicted of fraud.
During pre-trial hearings, Combs has appeared in court looking remarkably aged, his once jet-black, styled coif now overgrown and grey.
E News reports that Combs has permission from the judge to “receive non-prison clothing” to wear for his trial.According to the court order obtained by the publication: “He is permitted to have up to five button down shirts, up to five pairs of pants, up to five sweaters, up to five pairs of socks, and up to two pairs of shoes without laces to wear to court.”
‘Freak-offs’
Central to the case is Combs’s relationship with his former girlfriend, the singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, who is expected to be a key trial witness.
A disturbing surveillance video from 2016, which was aired by CNN last year, shows Combs physically assaulting Ventura at a hotel.
Prosecutors say the encounter occurred following one of the “freak-offs” they argue were a feature of his pattern of abuse.
The so-called “freak-offs” were coercive, drug-fuelled sexual marathons, including sex workers, that were sometimes filmed, according to the indictment.
It’s unclear how much of the CNN video will be shown to jurors as evidence in court-the footage’s quality has been a sticking point between the opposing legal teams-but Judge Arun Subramanian has ruled that at least some of it will be admissible.
Combs has no major convictions but has long been trailed by allegations of physical assault dating back well into the 1990s.
The floodgates against the Grammy winner opened after Ventura filed a civil suit alleging Combs subjected her to more than a decade of coercion by physical force and drugs, as well as a 2018 rape.
That 2023 suit was quickly settled out of court, but a string of similarly lurid sexual assault claims from both women and men followed – and the federal criminal indictment dropped after a raid of his luxury properties in Miami and Los Angeles.
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The indictment includes a charge of racketeering conspiracy, the federal statute known by its acronym RICO that was once seen as primarily targeting the mafia but in recent years has also been wielded frequently in cases of sexual abuse.
It allows government attorneys to project a long view of criminal activity rather than prosecuting isolated sex crimes and requires proving “predicate acts” – the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.
In 2021, it was successfully used to convict R. Kelly, the fallen R&B hitmaker who was sentenced to more than 30 years of prison, including for child sex crimes.
Industry watchers are also monitoring Combs’s case as a potential inflexion point in the music world, which, beyond Kelly’s case, has largely evaded the #MeToo reckoning that has rocked Hollywood.
READ MORE | From R. Kelly to Diddy: The music industry faces a #MeToo inflection point
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