Prosecutors need decide to finish protection questioning of Cassie on Friday in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial | Hollywood
NEW YORK — R&B singer Cassie is predicted again on the witness stand Friday in her ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs’ intercourse trafficking trial, with prosecutors insisting cross-examination end by the top of the day over issues that the pregnant Cassie is close to the delivery of her third little one.
Cassie has been testifying within the Manhattan courtroom since Tuesday about Combs forcing her to have intercourse with male escorts. Prosecutors mentioned in an in a single day letter to the decide it appeared protection attorneys have been intent on making Cassie to return to the witness stand on Monday, and so they have been anxious there was a danger of a mistrial if she went into labor over the weekend.
A lawyer for Combs claimed on Thursday that prosecutors purposely delayed calling Cassie to testify till Tuesday, after two different witnesses took the stand, in order that the protection would have much less time to cross-examine her. Within the in a single day letter, prosecutors shot again that it appeared protection attorneys have been making an attempt to “filibuster.”
After the jury left the courtroom on Thursday, Choose Arun Subramanian informed protection attorneys they’d have as much as 5 hours to query Cassie on Friday. Prosecutors mentioned they anticipated to have not more than a half hour of questions for Cassie as soon as the protection is completed.
Prosecutors requested the decide to pressure the cross examination to finish Friday, saying protection attorneys could have had a number of hours longer to query Cassie than the federal government took in its direct examination. The decide was taking over the matter Friday morning earlier than the jury returned.
Prosecutors accuse Combs of exploiting his standing as a robust music government to violently pressure Cassie and different ladies into marathon encounters with intercourse employees he known as “freak-offs,” which generally lasted days. He’s additionally accused of utilizing his entourage and workers to facilitate unlawful actions, together with prostitution-related transportation and coercion, which is a key aspect of the federal expenses.
Combs has pleaded not responsible to federal intercourse trafficking and racketeering expenses. His protection says that, whereas he could possibly be violent, nothing he did amounted to a prison enterprise. Combs insists all of the intercourse within the freak-offs was consensual.
Throughout cross-examination on Thursday, Combs’ attorneys sought to painting Cassie to the jury as a keen and keen participant within the music mogul’s sexual life-style, by having her learn aloud her messages to him together with some that confirmed her expressing enthusiasm for the drug-fueled group intercourse.
Cassie mentioned Combs locked in a lifetime of abuse by threatening to launch movies of her throughout these encounters, and testified Wednesday that Combs raped her when she broke up with him in 2018.
She sued Combs in 2023, accusing him of years of bodily and sexual abuse. Inside hours, the go well with was settled for $20 million — a determine Cassie disclosed for the primary time Wednesday — however dozens of comparable authorized claims adopted from different ladies. It additionally touched off a regulation enforcement investigation into Combs that has culminated on this month’s trial.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces a minimum of 15 years in jail if convicted.
Related Press author Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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