When Sean Combs was acquitted of two sex trafficking charges after harrowing testimony from R&B singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a more recent ex-girlfriend who testified under the pseudonym Jane, some surmised the jury simply didn’t believe the women. But there’s another possible explanation, experts and an alternate juror who sat through the seven-week trial tell Rolling Stone. The verdict may have hinged on jurors’ appraisal of Combs’ “intent.”
It’s possible jurors believed that either Cassie or Jane, or both, felt coerced by Combs into at least one commercial sex act with a male escort, but that still wasn’t enough for a conviction on sex trafficking. Jurors were required to find that Combs intended to commit sex trafficking, or at least that he recklessly disregarded how his actions might compel someone into sex trafficking, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian said in his instructions.
It’s a high bar to clear, especially with the element of reasonable doubt, the juror and experts say.
“Both women, I believe they were very credible. They wouldn’t go up there and want to lie. I believe the women. [But] I think having a smoking gun for intent, that was one of the things we were looking for,” the alternate juror, who asked to be identified only by his first name, George, tells Rolling Stone. “I was looking for something that would prove intent. And the defense did raise some doubt whether there was intent to coerce.”
While George was effectively excused last week just as deliberations started, he heard the same live testimony from the govenment’s 34 witnesses and filled up three spiral notebooks with notes. He says that for him, the hard evidence in the case — the text messages and the so-called “freak off” videos — fell short of proving that Combs knew the women felt coerced.
According to George, the freak-off videos shown to jurors on privacy screens not visible to the courtroom gallery depicted some sexual activity, but they were mostly “just talking and rubbing oil.” He says in some of the footage, Ventura appeared to be setting up candles or otherwise helping with “the ambiance” of the alleged drug-fueled threesomes that could last for days while Combs recorded video and masturbated.
George says “nothing in the video” showed a bright line of coercion. In other words, any distress or thoughts of coercion going on in the minds of the participants wasn’t visible to him. Even so, he believed the women’s testimony about feeling coerced, he reiterates.
“I really give credit and kudos to Cassie for coming in early on, heavily pregnant, testifying for days on end, and getting cross-examined. To put yourself through that — that testimony was very important,” he says. “Listening to both women, I did find them credible. But there were holes … Sometimes everything didn’t exactly fit.”
Two former federal prosecutors who secured the 2021 racketeering conviction of R. Kelly in Brooklyn say proving intent is notoriously difficult.
“I thought the government built a compelling case as to trafficking Cassie on at least some occasions. But the reality is that it’s very hard to prove that a defendant had the requisite intent to compel a person to perform labor, or engage in commercial sex, even if his conduct arguably had the effect of compelling the labor,” Elizabeth Geddes, the former EDNY prosecutor who delivered the closing arguments in the R. Kelly case, tells Rolling Stone. “Put another way, the jury could have credited that Cassie felt compelled to engage in the freak-offs for fear of otherwise enduring serious harm but found that there was not enough evidence to prove that Combs’ intent was for her to do so.”
Maria Cruz Melendez, the other lead prosecutor on the R. Kelly case — now a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — says proving intent is “one of the hardest elements” of prosecuting a crime.
“Essentially, it’s because you have to enter the mind of the defendant and then prove his intent to the jurors so they can say beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew what Combs was thinking when he engaged in the alleged conduct,” she says. “So, it’s understandable that some jurors will have a hard time with that, absent a confession or other type of admission that, from their perspective, is crystal clear.”
She says the law recognizes confessions aren’t the norm, so jurors are allowed to look at circumstantial evidence and the actions of defendants. “But ultimately, each juror is different,” she says. “What constitutes reasonable doubt for each person is different. That’s part of the challenge — whether you’ve met each individual juror’s threshold for reasonable doubt. And, in many ways, it is the same for meeting the intent element.”
When the jury’s unanimous verdict was read, Combs covered his face, let out a massive sigh and pumped his fist by his side. He was acquitted of two counts of sex trafficking and a single count of racketeering conspiracy. The jury convicted him on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He is due to be sentenced in early October.
In a letter to the court after the verdict, Combs’ defense calculated his expected sentencing guidelines to range between 21 and 27 months. Lead defense attorney Mark Agnifilo said he planned to argue Combs is “entitled” to “a below-guidelines sentence” considering he wasn’t a “pimp” making money off the escorts.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said the correct calculation for Combs’ sentencing range was at least 51 to 63 months imprisonment, meaning about four to five years. Federal judges aren’t required to follow sentencing guidelines and may treat them as a starting point while considering other factors, including evidence at trial that they considered credible. In the Southern District of New York, judges stuck to guideline ranges 34.5 percent of the time in the last fiscal year, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
“Today is a great victory for Sean Combs. It’s a great victory for the jury system,” Agnifilo told reporters outside the courthouse last week. “Today is a win. Today is a victory of all victories for Sean Combs.”
In his closing arguments, Agnifilo told jurors they were faced with a “tale of two trials.” He said one trial was “told from the mouths of witnesses,” while the other was based on the text messages and videos. He said the texts exchanged between Ventura and Combs around the time of their breakup in 2018 were “some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.” He called the couple’s relationship a “great modern love story.” Summing up the heart of the defense case, Agnifilo said Combs owned the fact he was violent at times, but domestic violence didn’t make Combs a sex trafficker leading a criminal enterprise.
Agnifilo challenged jurors to search through the hundreds of text messages between Combs and Ventura. “You won’t find one, you won’t find one where she is like, ‘I didn’t like that sex. I am not attracted to you. I don’t like our sex life,’” he argued.
In her four days of grueling testimony, Ventura said she regularly faced physical beatings and threats at the hands of Combs, so she learned to feign enthusiasm as a survival tactic. “It was always in the back of my mind that I would somehow be hurt by him,” she said. “Make the wrong face, and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit in the face.”
Still, George said the text messages Ventura and Jane exchanged with Combs raised doubt.
“The general feel of the messages was that they knew what they were doing, they knew what was happening,” he said. “Beyond a reasonable doubt, that’s such a high standard. But believe me, if we did find there was true intent, and there was an opportunity to convict [Combs] on any of the charges he was found not guilty on, the jury would have done that.”
After the verdict, Agnifilo said the jury got the verdict right, “or at least right enough.” He then said the defense planned to keep fighting in the face of the two prostitution convictions. “We’re not going to stop until [Combs] walks out of prison a free man to his family,” the lawyer vowed.
