Depending on where you sat in the court of public opinion, justice was either served or muted when jurors handed Sean “Diddy” Combs a mixed verdict in the New York County Courthouse this morning. After facing two counts of sex trafficking, two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, and one count of racketeering conspiracy, a jury only found the music mogul guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution, the least serious charge. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for the counts (though it’s unlcear whether that would be concurrently or consecutively).
While the outcome may have surprised many, acclaimed court reporter Meghann Cuniff wasn’t entirely surprised. Having covered matters like the Young Thug-focused YSL trial last year — among many other high-profiled cases in a lengthy career — the California-based reporter saw a few notable cracks in the prosecution’s argument.
Speaking with Okayplayer, Cuniff explains the factors that led to Diddy being acquitted of charges that could have landed him in prison for decades.
Okayplayer: So first off: were you surprised by the outcome of this case?
Meghann Cuniff: No, especially not after actually being in New York and seeing the case and getting a vibe for the courtroom. I got the feeling that [Diddy’s] lawyers were confident, and it’s always hard to read the jury, but you kind of wondered if maybe the jury thought they’d just been sitting there for seven weeks and watching a lot of pornography. There were times it just seemed like the RICO case was a stretch. I’ve covered a couple of RICO cases in Los Angeles involving the Mongols Motorcycle Club and then a big bribery scheme at LA City Hall that involved politicians and developers, and there were multiple indictments in that. And somebody even commented that this seemed like a pretty loose application of it, and that not charging co-conspirators kind of undermines the whole idea of a conspiracy or of an enterprise. And it seems like that was a problem that they had. But also some people are wondering if the RICO charge ended up distracting from the sex trafficking charges.
I thought that he had a chance of getting not guilty on the racketeering for sure, and that the sex trafficking would be a bit more of a difficult climb. It’s always personal preference, but I thought the prosecutors gave themselves a fighting chance with their closing argument because they really focused on the evidence in giving a path to jurors to convict. But I also think that they might’ve made some mistakes by even just saying that they could convict on RICO based on two drug counts. It’s like, okay, well, that would also just be a total waste of this entire case. Under that theory, you could convict pretty much any drug dealer in America of RICO. [It’s] getting something from somebody else that would be an enterprise if you’re doing it multiple times. So that’s what other former prosecutors kind of meant when they commented that this seemed like a stretch of RICO and over application of the statute.
That’s a good point. What else stood out to you about the prosecution’s argument?
I actually was looking at my story on closing arguments, and I highlighted this passage and sent it to a couple of friends. The prosecutor was trying to get ahead of the fact that the defense showed more of the “freak off” videos in cross-examination than the prosecutors did. And of course, they’re trying to drive home the fact that if you look at the videos, the women were clearly enjoying themselves and the public didn’t see those videos. But [U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik] in her closing argument commented that the defense is going to argue that the video shows that Jane [Doe] was enjoying herself [in the footage]. But if you look at her testimony, you can see that the only reason she looks like that is because Diddy had given her some new drug, and she was super, super high. She told you that.
And I highlighted that section and sent it to some friends and I was like, “The hazards of federal prosecutors who’ve never been to the Electric Daisy Carnival acting like they know something about sex and drugs.” And it was kind of a joke, but it was kind of not. One of my friends texted back, she’s like, “This is comical.” I’m like, yeah, these Ivy Leaguers who’ve never been west of Virginia are way too much. And I think that prosecutors just focused way too much on the video to try to make it into a way bigger organized crime case. Because I think a lot of evidence came out that Diddy is a bad guy and he does some really appalling things, but it was still just an overreach.
I don’t want to minimize what the women went through because clearly I do believe that they were victimized and that this was a terrible experience and traumatic, and that Diddy’s a bad guy. But I have to trust the jury verdict that they just did not see sex trafficking by forced fraud or coercion, and that they didn’t even want to convict on racketeering, even just based on two drug transactions or a bribery transaction.
So Diddy was convicted of transportation to engage in prostitution, but not sex trafficking. Why?
Well, they did emphasize that transportation for prostitution is illegal even if everyone consents. So they had to have convicted [him] just based on that. They didn’t convict on sex trafficking by force because it’s sex trafficking by force fraud or coercion. So it’s basically a consent argument. The difference would be consent.
How much time do you expect Diddy to be sentenced to for this case? He faces a maximum of 10 years on both counts.
I don’t know. I’d have to look at the U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines, but I doubt it’s going to be the max of 10 years. It’s probably more like a few years and he’d be credited for time served. But there’s a whole process through the US Sentencing Commission guidelines in an offender score in an offense level. And then there’s a chart that you go through and you see the range and it gives you a minimum and maximum thing. I haven’t done that. Sometimes I just let the lawyers who get paid to do that do that. But it is possible to go through this big hundreds pages sentencing guideline handbook and actually look up the charge and consider. Although one issue is that most of the people I write about don’t have criminal histories, so it’s easy to just say that they’re in the first category. But he does have some convictions on his record, and I don’t know exactly how they would read that and calculate that. So that makes it a little messier to try to figure out which bracket he falls into. But it’s not going to be the max. It can’t be more than a couple years. A few years. I don’t know.
Would you say that this case was similar to the Young Thug case in terms of, at least, government overreach?
Not really. I thought this case was much neater. The [Diddy case] prosecutors are much better organized. The case was a different case, but I do think the [the Diddy case] was an overreach as far as the RICO statute, although they had a much neater presentation. I think they really gave the evidence in the pathway to conviction. And the fact that the jury rejected [the RICO charge] almost shows jury nullification. They really did just think this case was an overreach because the drug distribution charges, technically, they could have convicted him on RICO just for that. They just didn’t want to.
So, looking at the outcome of this case: is this an example of the system letting victims down or is it an example of the system working as it should?
I think it’s an example of the system working as it should, and that the jury looked at all the evidence. Clearly they did — for a couple of days they did, and rendered their verdict based on the evidence. But it’s also an example of federal prosecutors letting the victims down by just bringing a case that even other federal prosecutors who’ve successfully prosecuted RICO cases thought was a little bit of an overreach. It undermines the idea of an enterprise to only charge one person with conspiring to commit crimes on behalf of an enterprise. But it’s always just personal opinion. I don’t know, but I can definitely see it both ways. The system works that he was able to get acquitted, but I mean, clearly there’s victimization going on here, and it kind of goes back to, even blaming federal prosecutors for this. Why did he not get charged with assault back when he was filmed assaulting Cassie in 2016?
There’s all these crimes that were committed along the way that he just got away with that it’s like, okay, well, maybe if he’d actually been prosecuted for [the Cassie assault] back in 2016 when just the thought of this video getting out was supposedly career ending and he was willing to pay a $100,000 [to keep it a secret], things would’ve changed and Jane [Doe] wouldn’t have been victimized later on. I mean, you can just see all these faults. So now that I’ve said that, I’m kind of regretting bashing federal prosecutors. The case was an overreach. But it just seems like the system failed for years before that.
