Sean “Diddy” Combs obtained a standing ovation from fellow inmates when the music mogul returned to jail after profitable acquittals on potential life-in-prison expenses, offering what his lawyer says may need been the most effective factor he might do for Black incarcerated males in America.
“All of them mentioned: ‘We by no means get to see anybody who beats the federal government,’” lawyer Marc Agnifilo mentioned in a weekend interview days after a jury acquitted Combs of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy expenses.
Combs, 55, stays jailed after his Wednesday (July 2) conviction on prostitution-related expenses and will nonetheless face a number of years in jail at an upcoming sentencing after being credited for 10 months already served.
After federal brokers raided his houses in Los Angeles and Miami in March 2024, the lawyer mentioned he informed Combs to anticipate arrest on intercourse trafficking expenses.
“I mentioned: ‘Perhaps it’s your destiny in life to be the man who wins,’” he recalled throughout a phone interview briefly interrupted by a jailhouse name from Combs. “They should see that somebody can win. I believe he took that to coronary heart.”
Blunt trial technique works
The decision got here after a veteran group of eight protection attorneys led by Agnifilo executed a trial technique that resonated with jurors. Combs handed attorneys notes throughout efficient cross examinations of almost three dozen witnesses over two months, together with Combs’ ex-employees.
The attorneys informed jurors Combs was a jealous home abuser with a drug drawback who participated within the swinger way of life by means of threesomes involving Combs, his girlfriends and one other man.
“You might assume to your self, wow, he’s a extremely unhealthy boyfriend,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos informed jurors in her Might opening assertion. However that, she mentioned, “is solely not intercourse trafficking.”
Agnifilo mentioned the blunt discuss was a “no brainer.”
“The violence was so clear and up entrance and we knew the federal government was going to attempt to confuse the jury into considering it was a part of a intercourse trafficking effort. So we needed to inform the jury what it was so that they wouldn’t assume it was one thing it wasn’t,” he mentioned.
Combs and his attorneys appeared deflated Tuesday when jurors mentioned they have been deadlocked on the racketeering rely however reached a verdict on intercourse trafficking and lesser prostitution-related expenses. A decide ordered them again to deliberate Wednesday.
“Nobody is aware of what to assume,” Agnifilo mentioned. Then he slept on it.
Morning shock awakes lawyer
“I get up at three within the morning and I textual content Teny and say: ”We have now to get a bail utility collectively,” he recalled. “It’s going to be a superb verdict for us however I believe he went down on the prostitution counts so let’s attempt to get him out.”
He mentioned he “type of whipped everyone into feeling higher” after concluding jurors would have convicted him of racketeering if they’d convicted him of intercourse trafficking as a result of trafficking was an alleged element of racketeering.
Agnifilo met with Combs earlier than courtroom and Combs entered the courtroom rejuvenated. Smiling, the onetime Catholic schoolboy prayed with household. In lower than an hour, the jury matched Agnifilo’s prediction.
The seemingly chastened Combs mouthed “thanks” to jurors and smiled as household and supporters applauded. After he was escorted from the room, spectators cheered the protection group, a number of chanting: “Dream Workforce! Dream Workforce!” A number of attorneys, together with Geragos, cried.
“This was a significant victory for the protection and a significant loss for the prosecution,” mentioned Mitchell Epner, a lawyer who labored with Agnifilo as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey over 20 years in the past. He credited “a dream group of protection attorneys” in opposition to prosecutors who nearly at all times win.
Agnifilo showcased what would change into his trial technique — belittling the fees and mocking the investigation that led to them — final September in arguing unsuccessfully for bail. The case in opposition to Combs was what occurs when the “federal authorities comes into our bedrooms,” he mentioned.
Legal professionals gently questioned most witnesses
Throughout an eight-week trial, Combs’ attorneys picked aside the prosecution case with principally mild however agency cross-examinations. Combs by no means testified and his attorneys referred to as no witnesses.
Sarah Krissoff, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, mentioned Combs’ protection group “had a story from the start and so they did all of it with out placing on any witnesses. That’s masterful.”
Satirically, Agnifilo expanded using racketeering legal guidelines as a federal prosecutor on an organized crime job drive in New Jersey 20 years in the past, utilizing them typically to indict road gangs in violence-torn cities.
“I knew the weak factors within the statute,” he mentioned. “The statute could be very mechanical. If you understand how the automobile works, you already know the place the fail factors are.”
He mentioned prosecutors had “dozens of fail factors.”
“They didn’t have a conspiracy, they simply didn’t,” he mentioned. “They principally had Combs’ private life and tried to construct racketeering round private assistants.”
Some private assistants, even after viewing movies of Combs beating his longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, had glowing issues to say about Combs on cross examination.
As soon as freed, Combs prone to re-enter home abusers program
For Combs, Agnifilo sees a protracted highway forward as soon as he’s freed as he works on private demons, seemingly re-entering a program for home batterers that he had simply began earlier than his arrest.
“He’s doing OK,” mentioned Agnifilo, who speaks with him 4 or 5 occasions every day.
He mentioned Combs genuinely needs enchancment and “realizes he has flaws like everybody else that he by no means labored on.”
“He burns scorching in all issues. I believe what he has come to see is that he has these flaws and there’s no quantity of fame and no quantity of fortune that may erase them,” he mentioned. “You possibly can’t cowl them up.”
For Agnifilo, a last shock awaited him after Combs’ bail was rejected when a person collapsed into violent seizures on the elevators outdoors the courtroom.
“I’m like: ‘What the hell?’” recalled the lawyer schooled in treating seizures.
Agnifilo straddled him, pulling him onto his facet and utilizing a foot to stop him from rolling backward whereas a regulation companion, Jacob Kaplan, put a backpack underneath the person’s head and Agnifilo’s daughter took his pulse.
“We made certain he didn’t choke on vomit. It was loopy. I used to be nervous about him,” he mentioned.
The person was ultimately taken away aware by rescue employees, leaving Agnifilo to ponder a tumultuous day.
“It was like I used to be getting punked by God,” he mentioned.