Multiple accusation for the rapper, who was acquitted for crimes of assembly and traffic of human beings for the purposes of sexual exploitation and sentenced for “transport of people for prostitution”
By our correspondent
NEW YORK – “Culpable”: but only for some of the accusations, the least serious. The rapper Sean «Diddy» Combs – at the center of one of the most sensational processes of the year – was sentenced for having transported humans to prostitution; but it was acquitted of the most serious accusationsincluding criminal association, trafficking in human beings for the purposes of sexual exploitation and fraud.
After the jury read the verdict, the Combs lawyer asked that his client would be immediately released on bail. “This is his first sentence and it is a crime of prostitution, so it must be released.” But the judge said no, no freedom on bail. Diddy will remain in prison until the sentence.
After the verdict, the rapper and producer had kneeling – while his lawyers hugged, some of his tears – before whispering the twin daughters, sons and 85 -year -old mother, present in the classroom: “I go home”.
Combs ora He risks a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two accusation of prostitution. The District Judge of the Aruns Subramanian will establish the sentence on a later date.
The acquittal of the higher accusation leaders means that Combs will avoid a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. He could have risked life imprisonment if he had been sentenced for sexual traffic or for criminal association.
Beyond the technicalities, the process revolved around a single question: P. Diddy is a dangerous criminal who forced innocent people to extreme sexual practices against their will, or an extreme sexual star that organized orgies without committing crimes and was unjustly accused by false women? The case, in the end, was all there.
Combs had declared himself not guilty and denied all the accusations when it was arrested last September.
The trial had started very badly: on the ready-on, the jurors had just sat on the first day when the accusation showed them A video of the rapper who brutally attacks his girlfriendthe R&B singer Cassie. In the images of a security camera, First he kicks her and then drags it out of the room at the Los Angeles Intercontinental. A guard testified that Combs had paid $ 100 thousand to hide the videoremained secret until the CNN broadcast in May 2024.
In the following seven weeks, the jurors listened to 34 witnesses, all called by the accusation, with the defense that nobody called the witnesses. The picture that came out: a very rich man, out of control and violent, feared by the abundant staff of collaborators who used to get drugs and satisfy his fantasies.
At the center of the case, they were there i «freak-off» organized by Combs, orge from the organization very complex In which two ex -girlfriends – one of whom to keep anonymity received the amateur “Jane” – said under the oath that Combs forced them to have sex with strangers while he looked.
Among the most dramatic moments: Cassie (whose real name Casandra Ventura, attended Combs from 2007 to 2018: he was under contract with the Combs record label, the Bad Boy Records) who says “I am not a rag doll”. The story, through four days of deposition, of Combs that beats it and orders her to have “disgusting” sex with prostitutes during “freak-off” that lasted several more days, sexual marathons powered by drugs while Cassie told him “I am not a beast, I need a break”, and he ordered his collaborators to bring crates of massage oil. Cassie also said that Combs raped her after she had told him that she wanted to close their relationship.
The story of “Jane”: one evening Combs squeezed her neck, gave her a handful in the face and forced her to a meeting with a prostitute saying “you will not ruin the evening in this way”. Both “jane” and Cassie were threatened: Combs would have published their porn videos if they had said no to his requests. During the searches that took place last year in the Combs houses in Los Angeles and Miami and in the hotel room in New York where it was arrested, the police found AR-15 rifles, other firearms and ammunition.
