NEW YORK (AP) — The possibility that music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs might testify at his federal sex trafficking trial all but vanished Tuesday after his lawyer predicted a defense presentation lasting as little as two days and the judge said jurors could be deliberating next week.
Attorney Marc Agnifilo told Judge Arun Subramanian that the defense presentation could last less than two days and not more than five, an estimate that would likely not apply if Combs testified. Testimony by two of his former girlfriends consumed two of the trial's six weeks.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges. He has been jailed at a federal lockup in Brooklyn since his September arrest at a Manhattan hotel.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey said prosecutors expected to rest Friday.
Earlier in the trial, Combs' ex-girlfriends Casandra “ Cassie ” Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym “ Jane ” told jurors that Combs used threats and monetary incentives to coerce them into frequent multi-day sex marathons where Combs watched, directed and sometimes filmed them engaging with male sex workers. Both women said they just wanted to be with Combs.
On Tuesday, the jury was shown nearly 20 minutes of explicit video recordings of those “freak-off” encounters from 2012 and 2014 as a defense lawyer cross examined a law enforcement agent about the tapes. Ventura’s relationship with Combs lasted from 2007 to 2018 while Jane dated him from 2021 until his arrest last fall.
As the recordings were played, one juror seemed to turn away from his video screen for most of the time although he kept on earphones carrying the sound to jurors. Spectators were blocked from seeing or hearing the graphic evidence. Other jurors sat back in their seats as the recordings played on the screens in front of them.
A day earlier, prosecutors had shown jurors about two minutes of snippets of the recordings.
In her opening statement on May 12, defense lawyer Teny Geragos called the videos “powerful evidence that the sexual conduct in this case was consensual and not based on coercion.”
“Some of you may find them hard to watch. Not because they are violent, not because they are non-consensual, but because they were never meant to be seen by people outside of that room. They are in one word — intimate. And they were always meant to remain that way,” she said.
She added: “These videos will feel invasive, but the government has charged him with sex trafficking, and the evidence of the alleged sex trafficking is on these videos. This is why you will have to see them.”
In her opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said Combs “used lies, drugs, threats, and violence to force and coerce, first, Cassie, and later Jane, to have sex with him in front of male escorts. The defendant insisted that the sex occur in a very specific, highly orchestrated way.”
Earlier Tuesday, the irate judge scolded prosecutors and defense lawyers, saying information about a closed court proceeding involving a juror last Friday had leaked to a media outlet because “one or more people in this courtroom clearly violated the court’s order.”
In the future, Subramanian said, he would hold Comey and Agnifilo responsible for any slipups, and any violations of his orders could result in criminal contempt penalties “at the most extreme level.”
“This is the only warning I will give,” he said.
