Sean “Diddy” Combs received a standing ovation from fellow inmates when the music mogul returned to jail after successful acquittals on potential life-in-prison fees, offering what his lawyer says might need been the perfect factor he may do for Black incarcerated males in America.
“They all said: ‘We never get to see anyone who beats the government,’” legal professional Marc Agnifilo stated in a weekend interview days after a jury acquitted Combs of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy fees.
Combs, 55, stays jailed after his Wednesday conviction on prostitution-related fees and will nonetheless face a number of years in jail at an upcoming sentencing after being credited for 10 months already served.
After federal brokers raided his properties in Los Angeles and Miami in March 2024, the lawyer stated he informed Combs to count on arrest on intercourse trafficking fees.
“I said: ‘Maybe it’s your fate in life to be the guy who wins,’” he recalled throughout a phone interview briefly interrupted by a jailhouse name from Combs. “They need to see that someone can win. I think he took that to heart.”
Blunt trial technique works
The decision got here after a veteran workforce of eight protection legal professionals led by Agnifilo executed a trial technique that resonated with jurors. Combs handed legal professionals notes throughout efficient cross examinations of practically three dozen witnesses over two months, together with Combs’ ex-employees.
The legal professionals informed jurors Combs was a jealous home abuser with a drug downside who participated within the swinger life-style by means of threesomes involving Combs, his girlfriends and one other man.
“You may think to yourself, wow, he is a really bad boyfriend,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos informed jurors in her Might opening assertion. However that, she stated, “is simply not sex trafficking.”
Agnifilo stated the blunt discuss was a “no brainer.”
“The violence was so clear and up front and we knew the government was going to try to confuse the jury into thinking it was part of a sex trafficking effort. So we had to tell the jury what it was so they wouldn’t think it was something it wasn’t,” he stated.
Combs and his legal professionals appeared deflated Tuesday when jurors stated they have been deadlocked on the racketeering depend however reached a verdict on intercourse trafficking and lesser prostitution-related fees. A decide ordered them again to deliberate Wednesday.
“No one knows what to think,” Agnifilo stated. Then he slept on it.
Morning shock awakes lawyer
“I wake up at three in the morning and I text Teny and say: ”We have now to get a bail utility collectively,” he recalled. “It’s going to be a good verdict for us but I think he went down on the prostitution counts so let’s try to get him out.”
He stated he “kind of whipped everybody into feeling better” after concluding jurors would have convicted him of racketeering if they’d convicted him of intercourse trafficking as a result of trafficking was an alleged part of racketeering.
Agnifilo met with Combs earlier than court docket and Combs entered the courtroom rejuvenated. Smiling, the onetime Catholic schoolboy prayed with household. In lower than an hour, the jury matched Agnifilo’s prediction.
The seemingly chastened Combs mouthed “thank you” to jurors and smiled as household and supporters applauded. After he was escorted from the room, spectators cheered the protection workforce, a couple of chanting: “Dream Team! Dream Team!” A number of legal professionals, together with Geragos, cried.
“This was a major victory for the defense and a major loss for the prosecution,” stated Mitchell Epner, a lawyer who labored with Agnifilo as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey over twenty years in the past. He credited “a dream team of defense lawyers” towards prosecutors who virtually all the time win.
Agnifilo showcased what would develop into his trial technique — belittling the costs and mocking the investigation that led to them — final September in arguing unsuccessfully for bail. The case towards Combs was what occurs when the “federal government comes into our bedrooms,” he stated.
No extra proof, no extra testimony. Simply the person who as soon as sat atop the music world, and the 12 individuals who will determine his destiny. Members of the jury have been despatched dwelling for the weekend, however once they return, the world will likely be watching. What’s going to occur once they return? Loren LoRosa, Danny Cevallos and Erica Byfield be part of NBC New York’s David Ushery to debate the newest developments within the intercourse trafficking case towards Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Attorneys gently questioned most witnesses
Throughout an eight-week trial, Combs’ legal professionals picked aside the prosecution case with principally light however agency cross-examinations. Combs by no means testified and his legal professionals referred to as no witnesses.
Sarah Krissoff, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, stated Combs’ protection workforce “had a narrative from the beginning and they did all of it without putting on any witnesses. That’s masterful.”
Mockingly, Agnifilo expanded the usage of racketeering legal guidelines as a federal prosecutor on an organized crime process drive in New Jersey twenty years in the past, utilizing them usually to indict avenue gangs in violence-torn cities.
“I knew the weak points in the statute,” he stated. “The statute is very mechanical. If you know how the car works, you know where the fail points are.”
He stated prosecutors had “dozens of fail points.”
“They didn’t have a conspiracy, they just didn’t,” he stated. “They basically had Combs’ personal life and tried to build racketeering around personal assistants.”
Some private assistants, even after viewing movies of Combs beating his longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, had glowing issues to say about Combs on cross examination.
As soon as freed, Combs prone to re-enter home abusers program
For Combs, Agnifilo sees an extended highway forward as soon as he’s freed as he works on private demons, doubtless re-entering a program for home batterers that he had simply began earlier than his arrest.
“He’s doing OK,” stated Agnifilo, who speaks with him 4 or 5 occasions every day.
He stated Combs genuinely wishes enchancment and “realizes he has flaws like everyone else that he never worked on.”
“He burns hot in all matters. I think what he has come to see is that he has these flaws and there’s no amount of fame and no amount of fortune” that may erase them,” he said. “You can’t cover them up.”
For Agnifilo, a closing shock awaited him after Combs’ bail was rejected when a person collapsed into violent seizures on the elevators exterior the courtroom.
“I’m like: ‘What the hell?’” recalled the lawyer schooled in treating seizures.
Agnifilo straddled him, pulling him onto his aspect and utilizing a foot to forestall him from rolling backward whereas a regulation accomplice, Jacob Kaplan, put a backpack underneath the person’s head and Agnifilo’s daughter took his pulse.
“We made sure he didn’t choke on vomit. It was crazy. I was worried about him,” he stated.
The person was ultimately taken away aware by rescue employees, leaving Agnifilo to ponder a tumultuous day.
“It was like I was getting punked by God,” he stated.
