Embattled entertainment mogul, Sean Combs aka Diddy has been found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking He was however convicted of a les
Embattled entertainment mogul, Sean Combs aka Diddy has been found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking
He was however convicted of a less serious prostitution charge after a high-profile seven-week trial in New York.
The jury, after 13 hours of deliberation over three days, found the 55-year-old guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Diddy thanked members of the eight-man four-woman jury as they left the courtroom.
The verdict came at the end of a trial in which prosecutors had accused Diddy of being the boss of a decades-long criminal group who directed loyal employees and bodyguards to commit myriad offenses at his behest.
The alleged crimes included forced labor, drug distribution, kidnapping, bribery, witness tampering and obstruction and arson.
To find Diddy guilty of racketeering, jurors needed to find the existence of a criminal enterprise and that the organization committed at least two of the offenses.
Jurors announced a partial verdict late Tuesday and said they were deadlocked on the racketeering charge, but Judge Arun Subramanian instructed them to keep working.
Diddy, once one of the most powerful figures in the music industry, had vehemently denied all charges.
Jurors began deliberating on Monday after the judge read them nearly three hours of instructions on how to apply the mountain of evidence and testimony in the case to the law.
The trial included at-times disturbing testimony along with thousands of pages of phone, financial and audiovisual records.
Diddy was charged with sex trafficking his former singer who was his lover, Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym Jane.
Both were in long-term relationships with Diddy and they each testified about abuse, threats and coercive sex in wrenching detail.
They both said they felt obligated to participate in Diddy’s-directed sexual marathons with hired men.
Diddy’s lawyers insisted the sex was consensual. They conceded domestic violence was a feature of his relationships — one harrowing example of him beating and dragging Ventura was caught on security footage that has been widely publicized.
Yet while disturbing, that did not amount to sex trafficking, the defense said.
But prosecutors in their final argument tore into Diddy’s team, who they said had contorted the facts endlessly.
“In his mind he was untouchable,” prosecutor Maurene Comey told the court.
“The defendant never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.”
