Across two days on the witness stand, Casandra Ventura, a longtime girlfriend of Sean Combs, delivered hours of testimony about a relationship filled with harrowing physical abuse and meticulous control, and defined by the expectation that she would fulfill his sexual fantasies.
Ms. Ventura, the government’s star witness, will now face questions from Mr. Combs’s lawyers. Some might even come directly from Mr. Combs, who has been passing notes to his legal team throughout the proceedings.
The defense has acknowledged responsibility for domestic violence — including against Ms. Ventura — but has vehemently denied that his behavior warrants the charges against him of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
The lawyer expected to question Ms. Ventura is Anna Estevao, who has rarely been the lead voice for the team during court proceedings to this point. She faces the delicate task of challenging the testimony of a visibly pregnant woman who testified that years of physical violence and sexual coercion by Mr. Combs led her to such emotional distress that she considered suicide.
Here are a few things we can expect from the cross-examination.
The defense will try to highlight moments of agency.
Mr. Combs is charged with sex-trafficking Ms. Ventura. To prove that, the government has to convince the jury that Mr. Combs forced or coerced her into sex parties with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”
Ms. Ventura testified that during her relationship with Mr. Combs, she repeatedly followed his directions and felt powerless to do otherwise. But the defense is likely to try highlighting moments when she might have displayed agency.
Teny Geragos, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, previewed this strategy during the defense’s opening statement when she described the women at the center of the government’s case as “capable” and “strong.”
“For Cassie, she made a choice every single day for years. A choice to stay with him — a choice to fight for him,” she said. “Because for 11 years, that was the better choice. That was her preferred choice.”
Jealousy will be front and center.
The government has tried to highlight moments when Mr. Combs was violent in the context of a freak-off — most notably, during his assault of Ms. Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
But the defense has argued that Mr. Combs’s violence has typically been fueled by romantic jealousy or drug use, not the freak-offs themselves. In criminal law, Ms. Geragos said in her opening statement, that equates to a charge of assault, not sex trafficking.
“As you look at the evidence and as you evaluate Cassie and Combs’s relationship,” she said, “you will see that their fights, their cheating, their jealousy, it typically surrounded his cheating or it surrounded hers.”
The defense will ask about footage of freak-offs.
Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs turned video of the freak-offs into “blackmail materials,” saving the footage despite her requests that he delete it and threatening to release videos when he was angry with her. This accusation is at the heart of the government’s case that these sexual encounters were coerced.
The defense has been trying to undercut that claim by highlighting to the jury that the videos of freak-offs that are evidence in the case did not come from Mr. Combs’s devices. They came from Ms. Ventura’s.
When the government raided Mr. Combs’s homes last year, Ms. Geragos said in her opening statement, they seized “countless” electronic devices. But, she said, “the only freak-off videos you will see or hear about at this trial came from her devices that she kept for five years.” (Ms. Ventura testified that the devices had long been broken.)
It is possible during cross-examination that jurors will see clips from those videos. Because the footage is sexually explicit and involves women who have made allegations of sexual abuse, the evidence will be sealed, meaning it will not be shown to the entire courtroom.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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