The ultimate stage of jury choice for the racketeering and intercourse trafficking trial of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was postponed till early subsequent week, proper earlier than opening arguments start, a federal choose selected Friday.
Prosecutors allege that Combs, 55, used his fame and energy on the high of the hip-hop world to sexually abuse girls from 2004 to 2024. He pleaded not responsible after his September arrest and has remained held with out bail at a federal lockup in Brooklyn.
Decide Arun Subramanian granted a request by protection legal professionals to delay till Monday the ultimate step within the jury choice course of, anticipated to final lower than an hour. Prosecutors unsuccessfully objected.
The doable jurors weren’t current on Friday as federal prosecutors and legal professionals assembled in a Manhattan courtroom, with Combs additionally current, to slim a pool of 45 potential jurors right down to a jury of 12 and 6 alternates who will hear the two-month trial.
For 3 days this week, would-be jurors had been requested questions to assist the choose and legal professionals decide in the event that they could possibly be truthful and neutral. And so they have been additionally questioned to make sure they may determine the case on the information even after seeing express movies of sexual exercise that some may discover disturbing.
On Monday, prosecutors shall be permitted to strike six potential jurors from the jury whereas protection legal professionals have been allowed 10 strikes earlier than the jury is finalized. Typically, legal professionals don’t have to elucidate why they’re ejecting people from the panel. The method was anticipated to take as much as an hour.
If Combs is convicted on all expenses, which embrace racketeering, kidnapping, arson, bribery and intercourse trafficking, he would face a compulsory 15 years in jail and will stay behind bars for all times.
Prosecutors allege that the Unhealthy Boy Data founder used his fame and energy on the high of the hip-hop world to sexually abuse girls from 2004 to 2024.
An indictment contains descriptions of “Freak Offs,” drugged-up orgies by which girls have been pressured to have intercourse with male intercourse staff whereas Combs filmed them.
The costs towards him additionally painting Combs as abusive to his victims, generally choking, hitting, kicking and dragging them, typically by the hair. As soon as, the indictment alleges, he even dangled somebody from a balcony.
His legal professionals contend that prosecutors try to criminalize sexual exercise between consenting adults. They concede that Combs had abused varied substances however say he has undergone remedy.
A centerpiece of the proof towards him are recordings of Combs beating a longtime girlfriend in a Los Angeles lodge hallway in 2016.
After a video of the encounter aired on CNN final yr, Combs apologized, saying, “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”
Quite a few potential jurors interviewed by the choose this week mentioned they’d seen the video and a few have been deemed to be too affected by it to be neutral and stay within the jury pool.
