Sean “Diddy” Combs will get standing ovation in jail after court docket victory, his lawyer says

Sean “Diddy” Combs obtained a standing ovation from fellow inmates when the music mogul returned to jail after being acquitted of intercourse trafficking and racketeering in his federal trial in New York, offering what his lawyer says might need been the very best factor he may do for incarcerated Black males in America.

Combs, 55, was discovered responsible of transportation to interact in prostitution, however was acquitted on probably the most critical prices, which carried potential life-in-prison sentences. 

“All of them stated: ‘We by no means get to see anybody who beats the federal government,'” legal professional Marc Agnifilo instructed The Related Press in a weekend interview days after the jury reached its verdict.

The music mogul stays jailed at a federal lockup in Brooklyn after his conviction Wednesday on the prostitution-related prices, which may put him in jail for a number of extra years. Any sentence will embrace credit score for time served, which at the moment quantities to virtually 10 months.

After federal brokers raided Combs’ properties in Los Angeles and the Miami space in March 2024, Agnifilo stated he instructed the “I will Be Lacking You” singer to count on to be arrested on intercourse trafficking prices.

“I stated: ‘Perhaps it is your destiny in life to be the man who wins,'” he recalled throughout a phone interview briefly interrupted by a jailhouse name from Combs. “They should see that somebody can win. I feel he took that to coronary heart.”

Blunt trial technique works

The verdict in Manhattan federal court docket got here after a veteran staff of eight protection attorneys led by Agnifilo executed a trial technique that resonated with jurors. Combs handed attorneys notes throughout efficient cross-examinations of practically three dozen witnesses over two months, together with Combs’ ex-employees.

The attorneys instructed jurors Combs was a jealous home abuser with a drug drawback who participated within the swinger life-style via threesomes involving Combs, his girlfriends and one other man.

“You might suppose to your self, wow, he’s a extremely unhealthy boyfriend,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos instructed jurors in her Might opening assertion. However that, she stated, “is just not intercourse trafficking.”

Agnifilo stated the blunt speak was a “no brainer.”

“The violence was so clear and up entrance and we knew the federal government was going to attempt to confuse the jury into considering it was a part of a intercourse trafficking effort. So we needed to inform the jury what it was so they would not suppose it was one thing it wasn’t,” he stated.

Combs and his attorneys appeared deflated Tuesday when jurors stated they have been deadlocked on the racketeering depend however had reached a verdict on intercourse trafficking and lesser prostitution-related prices. A choose ordered them again to deliberate Wednesday.

“Nobody is aware of what to suppose,” Agnifilo stated. Then he slept on it.

Morning shock awakes lawyer

“I get up at three within the morning and I textual content Teny and say: “We now have to get a bail software collectively,” he recalled. “It may be a great verdict for us however I feel he went down on the prostitution counts so let’s attempt to get him out.”

He stated he “type of whipped everyone into feeling higher” after concluding jurors would have convicted him of racketeering if that they had convicted him of intercourse trafficking as a result of trafficking was an alleged element 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 “thanks” to jurors and smiled as household and supporters applauded. After he was escorted from the room, spectators cheered the protection staff, just a few chanting: “Dream Crew! Dream Crew!” A number of attorneys, together with Geragos, cried.

“This was a significant victory for the protection and a significant loss for the prosecution,” stated Mitchell Epner, a lawyer who labored with Agnifilo as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey over 20 years in the past. He credited “a dream staff of protection attorneys” in opposition to prosecutors who virtually all the time win.

Agnifilo showcased what would turn into his trial technique — belittling the costs and mocking the investigation that led to them — final September in arguing unsuccessfully for bail. The case in opposition to Combs was what occurs when the “federal authorities comes into our bedrooms,” he stated.

Legal professionals gently questioned most witnesses

Throughout an eight-week trial, Combs’ attorneys picked aside the prosecution case with principally mild however agency cross-examinations. Combs by no means testified and his attorneys known as no witnesses.

Sarah Krissoff, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, stated Combs’ protection staff “had a story from the start they usually did all of it with out placing on any witnesses. That is masterful.”

Sarcastically, Agnifilo expanded the usage of racketeering legal guidelines as a federal prosecutor on an organized crime process power in New Jersey 20 years in the past, utilizing them usually to indict avenue gangs in violence-torn cities.

“I knew the weak factors within the statute,” he stated. “The statute could be very mechanical. If you know the way the automobile works, you realize the place the fail factors are.”

He stated prosecutors had “dozens of fail factors.”

“They did not have a conspiracy, they only did not,” he stated. “They principally had Combs’ private life and tried to construct racketeering round private 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 reenter home abusers program

For Combs, Agnifilo sees an extended highway forward as soon as he’s freed and resumes work on private demons, probably reentering a program for home batterers that he had simply began earlier than his arrest.

“He is doing OK,” stated Agnifilo, who speaks with him 4 or 5 instances every day.

He stated Combs genuinely needs enchancment and “realizes he has flaws like everybody else that he by no means labored on.”

“He burns scorching in all issues. I feel what he has come to see is that he has these flaws and there is not any quantity of fame and no quantity of fortune” that may erase them,” he stated. “You possibly can’t cowl them up.”

For Agnifilo, a ultimate shock awaited him after Combs’ bail was rejected when a person collapsed into violent seizures on the elevators exterior the courtroom.

“I am like: ‘What the hell?'” recalled the lawyer, who has expertise in treating seizures.

Agnifilo straddled him, pulling him onto his facet and utilizing a foot to forestall him from rolling backward whereas a regulation associate, Jacob Kaplan, put a backpack beneath the person’s head and Agnifilo’s daughter took his pulse.

“We made certain he did not choke on vomit. It was loopy. I used to be fearful about him,” he stated.

The person was finally taken away acutely aware by rescue employees, leaving Agnifilo to ponder a tumultuous day.

“It was like I used to be getting punked by God,” he stated.