Sean Combs raised both hands with the palms pressed together and gestured his thanks to the jurors as they filed out of Courtroom 26A in Manhattan federal court on Thursday morning. They had just found him not guilty of charges that could have sent him to jail for life.
He then turned to the chair where he had been sitting a few minutes before, leafing through papers whose only value could have been a distraction from what might await him.
The answer had come when the clerk polled the jury; not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. He had been convicted of violating the Mann Act, transporting people across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.
In Combs’ case, the transport of paid male escorts over almost two decades has been accompanied by sexual and physical abuse. But he now bowed forward and prayed as if he had been granted a kind of salvation and the acquittal cleansed his sins.
Behind him and to the right of the judge’s bench was another chair, where Cassie Vantura had recounted days-long “freak offs” during which Combs videoed escorts having drug-fueled sex with her. She testified that she had not refused because she had been afraid of “what ‘no’ might bring.” The evidence included photos taken after she had been battered and stomped for offending him in even minor ways.
But all that was at risk of being forgotten. Combs rose from the chair he had occupied as a defendant and he was smiling as he turned to his mother and seven children. He applauded them and they began to clap in return and they were joined by other supporters in the courtroom.
But in truth it was a win without a true victory. Nobody can rightly cheer a man who was captured on a hotel surveillance video kicking Cassie Ventura and dragging her by her hair.
Late Tuesday afternoon, when the jury sent in a note that it had reached a verdict on everything but the racketeering charges, Combs and his lawyers were the ones who looked grim, huddling around him as he sat in that defendant’s chair, offering hope when it seemed like there might be none.
At 9 AM Wednesday, the jury resumed deliberating on the racketeering charge. The charge more often fits criminal enterprises such as the multimillion-dollar Harlem heroin ring that Combs’ father was indicted for in this same jurisdiction in 1972. Milton Combs was spared a trial when his co-conspirators came to suspect he was a snitch. He was found shot to death in his car, which was parked off the upper end of Central Park. Melvin’s wife, Janice Combs, identified the body and proceeded to raise three-year-old son Sean. The co-conspirators were all convicted in Manhattan federal court.
Fifty-three years later, Janice Combs sat with her seven grandchildren in the new Manhattan federal courthouse and waited for a jury’s decision on whether years of coercive sexual abuse and various alleged crimes including drug distribution and kidnapping along with sexual abuse constituted racketeering. The drugs in this instance were not multiple kilos of heroin but a small stash of party-prolongers. The supposed kidnapping involved an employee who was repeatedly picked up and dropped off for lie detector tests about stolen jewelry.
At 9:35 AM, Sean Combs’ daughters and sons entered and sat with their grandmother. Combs had entered the courtroom a short time before wearing the same light yellow sweater and grey pants as the day before, but he looked more resigned than defeated as he stood before the court in a prayer that did not seem destined to be answered.
At 10:10 AM, Combs returned to the courtroom after a brief conversation with his lawyers outside. He was rubbing his hands together as he said something to his family.
He then returned to the defendant’s chair, where he had been tap-tap-tapping, without a discernible rhythm on Tuesday. He now began to nod his head to a beat, but for just a moment. Word began spreading through the courtroom that the jury had reached a verdict.
At 10:13 AM, the clerk called out, “All Rise!” Judge Arun Subramanian entered and read aloud a note the jury had sent 21 minutes before. He asked that the jurors be brought in. They each confirmed their verdict on the five counts, beginning with not guilty on count 1, racketeering.
Combs had been remanded to the Metropolitan Detention (MDC) in Brooklyn since his arrest in September of last year as a flight risk facing life in prison. His lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, now asked the judge to free him on $1 million bail pending his sentencing on the two counts of transporting for prostitution, which each carry a maximum of 10 years.
“Is your proposal that Mr. Combs leave this courtroom and walk outside?” the judge asked.
“That is my proposal, yes,” the lawyer replied.
The prosecution noted that the prostitution was accompanied by serious violence and drug use and said Combs should remain behind bars.
“I understand Mr. Combs does not want to go back to the MDC,” the judge said. A few hours later, however, he ruled that he must, and he denied the request for bail.
The prosecutors had literally made a federal case out of continued instances of sexual abuse and domestic violence with the notion that those crimes should be treated as seriously as selling heroin. And, with the conviction rate in federal court exceeding 95 percent, it had seemed likely he would never again return to the city whose spires could be seen beyond the gauze-like shades over the courtroom’s windows.
He is now all but certain to return eventually to the streets he once strode as an undeserving king.
“Mr Combs has been given his life back by the jury,” his lawyer said.
And you have to wonder how Cassie Ventura, who sat in the witness chair, feels to be in this same city.
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