Legal professionals for Sean “Diddy” Combs are urging a decide to let potential jurors on the hip-hop mogul’s upcoming intercourse trafficking trial be questioned about their views concerning intercourse, medicine and violence.
The attorneys raised the topic as they submitted a proposed questionnaire to be crammed out by people summoned for his Might 5 trial in Manhattan federal courtroom.
In a letter to a decide late Friday, the attorneys stated they need to know the willingness of would-be jurors to look at movies which might be sexually specific or present bodily assault. Additionally they say they need to know their views towards folks with a number of sexual companions.
Prosecutors in a letter of their very own criticized the protection’s proposed questionnaire as too lengthy and relating topics that may be higher requested in individual by the decide, if in any respect.
They stated among the protection’s proposed 72 questions, some containing subparts, had been “utterly irrelevant to the ability to serve on a jury.”
Prosecutors additionally cited the intercourse trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell for instance of how a prolonged questionnaire will be damaging.
After Maxwell was convicted of intercourse trafficking in December 2021, a juror admitted that he had didn’t disclose that he was a intercourse abuse sufferer, blaming his oversight partially on being “distracted as he filled out the questionnaire” and having “skimmed way too fast,” inflicting him to misconceive questions.
Decide Arun Subramanian has instructed attorneys that questionnaires will probably be distributed to a whole bunch of potential jurors on the finish of April in order that questioning of potential jurors can start on Might 5, with opening statements seemingly on Might 12.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not responsible to allegations that he subjected people to sexual abuse over a two-decade interval. The Unhealthy Boy Data founder has remained incarcerated with out bail since his September arrest.
An indictment accuses Combs of utilizing the “power and prestige” he wielded as a music mogul to intimidate, threaten and lure ladies into his orbit, usually below the pretense of a romantic relationship.
The indictment stated he then used power, threats and coercion to trigger victims, together with three ladies specified within the courtroom papers, to interact in industrial intercourse acts.
It stated he subjected his victims to violence, threats of violence, threats of economic and reputational hurt and verbal abuse.
Prosecutors have stated {that a} key piece of the proof at trial will probably be a video displaying Combs punching his former protege and girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, and throwing her on the ground in a resort hallway.
Protection attorneys have argued that prosecutors constructed their case on prices that attempt to demonize intercourse acts between consenting adults.
They instructed the decide they had been unable to succeed in a consensus with prosecutors for what potential jurors must be requested on questionnaires.
“The defense believes it is important that we allow potential jurors to write candidly about the unprecedented and negative media attention that they may have been exposed to, related to Mr. Combs,” the attorneys wrote.
Protection attorneys additionally requested that jurors be requested to inform in the event that they’ve watched exhibits on tv titled: “The Fall of Diddy,” “Diddy Do It?” “The Downfall of Diddy” and “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.”
