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, with no way of knowing how things would turn out.
He had not been acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking. He had been convicted of lesser charges of transporting people across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. In Combs’ case, he had paid males escorts over almost two decades for days-long freak-offs too often accompanied by physical and and sexual abuse. But he now bowed forward onto the chair as if it were an altar that granted a kind of salvation and the acquittal cleansed his sins.
“Stay in the light,” he told his family after he rose. “I’ll see you when I get out.”
Behind him and to the right of the judge’s bench was another chair, this one 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 now 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.
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 had looked 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 a.m. Wednesday, the jury resumed deliberating on the racketeering count. 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 arrived 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 family and led them in a prayer that did not seem destined to be answered. He was then led by a court officer through a side door into holding area for reasons that were not immediately clear. He was joined there by heir defense lawyers.
At 10:10 a.m., Combs returned to the courtroom. He was rubbing his hands together as he said something to his family. He then returned to the defendant’s chair, where he had sat 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 a.m., the clerk called out, “All Rise!” Judge Arun Subramanian entered and read aloud a note the jury had sent to him 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.
“Mr. Combs has been given his life back by the jury,” Agnifilo said.
“Is your proposal that Mr. Combs leave this courtroom and walk outside?” the judge asked.
“That is my proposal, yes,” Agnifilo 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.
The judge gave both sides until early afternoon to put their arguments regarding bail in writing. He set a hearing for 5 p.m.
“My baby is coming home today,” Combs’ mother said as she waited.
In the meantime, the judge received a letter from Ventura’s lawyer, Douglas Wigdor.
“Detention is mandatory post conviction on these charges,” Wigdor correctly asserted. “And Ms. Ventura believes that Mr. Combs is likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including herself, as well as to the community,”
The judge largely shared that view when he took the bench.
“Bail is denied,” he ruled .
The judge found the defense had failed to establish that Combs was not a danger to others. He noted that during the closing arguments, Agnifilo acknowledged that Combs had committed domestic violence.
“Domestic violence is violence,” the judge said, adding that it is difficult to police because it so often occurs behind closed doors.
The judge noted that in a case such as this, the law only permits post conviction bail in “exceptional circumstances.” Lead prosecutor Maurene Comey contended that Combs is “exceptional only in his wealth, his violence and his brazenness,”
“[Combs] is an extremely violent man with an extraordinarily dangerous temper who has shown no remorse and no regret,” she added.
The judge was unmoved by lengthy additional arguments from Agnifilo, who reported that Combs had been signed up with a “batterers program” at the Urban Resource Institute in New York at the time of his arrest.
At one point, Combs raised his right hand to signal he wanted to address the judge, as if he could somehow win him over. Combs’ lawyers dissuaded him. But he was able to speak to his family before he was returned to the MDC pending sentencing in October, or maybe before.
“I feel good,” he said.
