Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking and racketeering jury said it has reached a verdict on all but one charge.
The jury, in a note to US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Tuesday afternoon, said that they’ve reached a verdict on all charges except the first count, for racketeering. The other four counts are related to the sex trafficking of the prosecution’s key witness, R&B singer Cassie Ventura, as well as another one of Combs’ exes who testified under the pseudonym “Jane.”
The note said the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the racketeering count because they had jurors on “each side,” according to US District Judge Arun Subramanian.
Prosecutors asked the judge to give the jurors a version of the Allen charge — standard instructions for a deadlocked jury. Combs’ defense attorneys said it was too early for the charge, and that the judge should just ask the jurors to keep deliberating.
The eight-man, four-woman panel, which is in its second day of deliberations, appeared to home in on testimony given by Ventura earlier Tuesday.
Combs’ jury sent a note to the judge asking for testimony transcripts relating to four specific parts about Ventura’s alleged sex trafficking.
It asked for copies of Ventura’s testimony regarding the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles, about an event at Cannes, and about a “freak off” with Daniel Phillip, a dancer who testified that he was recruited multiple times for Combs’ sex performances.
The jurors also requested Phillip’s own testimony about an encounter with Ventura in New York’s Essex hotel, where Phillip said he believed Combs had physically beaten her.
Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and Subramanian quickly determined which portions of the transcript they should send to the jury regarding Phillip and Cannes, where Ventura testified Combs threatened to publish videos of them having sex.
But they spent much of the morning arguing over the scope of testimony regarding the InterContinental hotel, which sprawled over hundreds of pages of the trial transcript. Combs was infamously caught on the hotel’s security camera beating Ventura in a hallway, in 2016, following a freak off sex performance with her.
The jury officially got the case on Monday at around 11:30 am ET.
And just 70 minutes into the panelists weighing the charges against the hip-hop mogul, the jury sent the judge a note complaining about one particular juror.
“We have a juror,” read the note, “who we are concerned cannot follow your honor’s instructions.”
The note identified the juror as the one sitting in seat number three, a 51-year-old Manhattan man and self-described scientist.
The judge ultimately instructed the jurors of their duty to follow his instructions and continue deliberations.
Any kind of jury chaos is typically considered a good sign for the defense, attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Chutkow told Business Insider.
“As a general matter, the more conflict and the more chaos occurs in a jury deliberation that spills out so that the court and the counsel know about it tends to be better for the defense because it could mean that a mistrial is looming,” said Chutkow.
Chutkow added that in high-profile, complex cases such as Combs’ “you’re going to get a lot of differences of opinion and things get very hot in the jury room.”
“People have very strongly felt feelings, and there can be circumstances where a juror folds up their arms, turns away from the others, and says ‘I don’t want to talk with you guys anymore,'” he said.
“That is just one of the processes that it’s sort of up to the jury to self-regulate and to figure out,” said Chutkow.
If the jury convicts Combs, 55, on the top charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, the music tycoon could face a possible sentence of up to life in prison.
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