Jury acquits music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs on sex trafficking and RICO charges, convicts on lower counts

MANHATTAN (CN) — Cheers broke out in a federal courtroom on Wednesday after a Manhattan jury acquitted music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs on racketeering and sex trafficking charges.

Combs, who faced life in prison on those counts, was instead convicted on two counts of Mann Act Transportation — prostitution crimes that carry maximum sentences of 10 years each.

Prosecutors accused the Bad Boy CEO of leading a criminal racketeering enterprise that carried out a litany of crimes to facilitate a pattern of trafficking women across the country for clandestine choreographed sex marathons in luxury hotel rooms.

But after deliberating for roughly 13 hours over the course of three days this week, the jury rejected the government’s broader narrative and convicted Combs only on the lesser charges in the five-count indictment.

Combs looked elated in the courtroom as the verdict was being read, pumping his fist and clasping his hands in prayer as he listened from the defense table. After the jurors left, he got down on his knees and prayed on his chair.

His supporters in the gallery broke into cheers and applause.

But Combs will remain behind bars awaiting his sentencing after U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian found that his admitted history of domestic violence would make it “impossible” to ensure community safety by releasing him.

“The defense conceded defendant’s violence in his personal relationships, saying ‘it happened,’” Subramanian said, referencing several examples of trial testimony.

Combs’ violence, the judge said, was “starkly depicted” in a 2016 security video of him dragging and hitting his then-girlfriend at the InterContinental Hotel — a clip that prosecutors used as evidence at trial.

Still, Combs’ defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said Wednesday’s result was “a victory of all victories for Sean Combs.”

“We fight on,” Agnifilo said, speaking to reporters outside of the courthouse. “We’re going to win and we’re not going to stop until he walks out of prison a free man to his family.”

Agnifilo moved for Combs’ release on bail immediately after hearing the verdict.

“My proposal would be he be released today,” Agnifilo said, adding that his client was “acquitted of very, very serious charges” and convicted of lesser ones.

Prosecutors disagreed — Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey accused Agnifilo of “downplaying” the convictions and said the government will still be seeking a “substantial period of incarceration."

The jury reached its verdict in Combs’ trial nine months after he was arrested at the Park Hyatt Hotel in New York City in September 2024.

Jurors had reached a partial verdict in the case Tuesday but remained deadlocked on the case’s top count of racketeering.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the 12 jurors sent a note to the court indicating that they had come to an agreement on the sex trafficking charges against Combs.

Subramanian, a Joe Biden appointee, elected not to take their partial verdict, instead encouraging the jury to continue arguing on the top count.

Jurors returned to the courtroom Wednesday to decide whether Combs used his business empire as a criminal enterprise to orchestrate coerced sexual encounters, as prosecutors claimed. His defense argued he privately lived a non-monogamous “swinger” lifestyle, involving “homemade porn” and daily drug use resulting in jealousy and infidelity that led to domestic violence.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik focused on detailing the predicate acts supporting the top RICO charge, including arson, kidnapping, bribery, forced labor, narcotics distribution, witness tampering and transporting individuals for prostitution.

To convict on the top racketeering count, jurors needed to find members of Combs’ enterprise committed at least two instances of any of the predicate acts, she clarified.

Slavik also explained to jurors that proving women had been coerced into any single “freak-off” was enough to convict on a sex-trafficking count, regardless of whether they had initially consented to participate in the encounters to please Combs, if later they became unwilling participants who complied through illegal means like force, fraud or coercion.

“These are not beautiful evenings,” she said of the drug-fueled hotel sex marathon. “They are the same things over and over set up for one man’s pleasure, one man’s enjoyment.”

Slavik told jurors that Combs’ criminal enterprise consisted of himself at the top, in addition to an inner circle of his “most loyal lieutenants” and a “small army” of his personal staff, who all worked in tandem to fulfill his desires and protect his reputation.

“The most involved from the inner circle were D-Roc, KK and Faheem,” she said, referring to Combs’ longtime head of security, Damion “D-Roc” Butler, his chief of staff, Kristina Khorram and another security director, respectively — none of whom testified at the two-month trial.

“Those lieutenants were particularly loyal — and they were armed and ready,” she said. “They were at the defendant’s side for some of the most violent and threatening acts.”

Slavik described Combs’ personal assistants as “the foot soldiers” of the enterprise. She said they “didn’t blink an eye” when they were directed to do something by Combs or the inner circle, “even when it meant facilitating a crime.”

“The defendant used the money and the gravitas from his businesses to facilitate the crimes that he and his inner circle committed,” she said.

Both sides rested their respective cases during the trial’s seventh week of evidence and testimony. All told, prosecutors questioned 34 witnesses before resting their case. At the same time, Combs’ defense opted to call no witnesses and instead entered a series of stipulations into evidence for 23 minutes before formally concluding the entirety of his defense’s presentation.

On Friday, Comey delivered the prosecution’s closing rebuttal, pushing back against Combs’ defense’s attempt to separate the domestic violence and sex trafficking charges tied to two ex-girlfriends — R&B singer Cassie Ventura and an Instagram model known as “Jane” — who said they were pressured into Combs’ drug-fueled hotel sex parties involving hired male escorts.

“If part of the abuse is making your partner participate in a commercial sex act, you’re guilty of sex trafficking,” she said in the final pitch of the trial before the jury received the case for deliberations.

Comey, who also handled prosecutors’ closing rebuttal in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial in 2021, urged jurors to hold Combs accountable and “find him guilty.”

“For 20 years, the defendant got away with his crimes. That ends in this courtroom,” she said during the conclusion of the rebuttal. “The defendant is not a god. He is a person. And in this courtroom, he stands equal before the law. Overwhelming evidence proves his guilt.”

Formerly known as Puff Daddy, Combs worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding his own record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, in 1993. He came to national prominence in the early 1990s, producing hit debut albums for rapper The Notorious B.I.G. and R&B singer Mary J. Blige.

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