Jury selection was set to begin in the morning, possibly taking several days, with the lawyers’ opening statements and testimony anticipated to start next week.
Judge Arun Subramanian initiated the proceedings shortly after 9am (11pm AEST) on Monday, making several decisions on what topics experts could testify about when on the witness stand.
The 17-page indictment against Combs resembles a charging document for a Mafia boss or drug gang leader, accusing him of engaging in sex trafficking and overseeing a racketeering conspiracy.
The indictment says that with the help of people in his entourage and employees from his network of businesses, Combs engaged in a two-decade pattern of abusive behaviour against women and others.
Women were manipulated into participating in drug-fuelled sexual performances with male sex workers that Combs called “Freak Offs”, prosecutors say.
To keep women in line, prosecutors say Combs used a mix of influence and violence: He offered to boost their entertainment careers if they did what he asked â or cut them off if they didn’t.
And when he wasn’t getting what he wanted, the indictment says Combs and his associates resorted to violent acts including beatings, kidnapping and arson. Once, the indictment alleges, he even dangled someone from a balcony.
Combs and his lawyers say he is innocent. Any group sex was consensual, they say. There was no effort to coerce people into things they didn’t want to do, and nothing that happened amounted to a criminal racket, they say.
The trial is expected to take at least eight weeks.
Combs, 55, has acknowledged one episode of violence that is likely to be featured in the trial. In 2016, a security camera recorded him beating up his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel. Cassie filed a lawsuit in late 2023 saying Combs had subjected her to years of abuse, including beatings and rape.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, did.
Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has said Combs was “not a perfect person” and that there had been drug use and toxic relationships, but said all sexual activity between Combs, Cassie and other people was consensual.
The trial is the latest and most serious in a long string of legal problems for Combs. If convicted, he faces the possibility of decades in prison.
In 1999 he was charged with bursting into the offices of an Interscope Records executive with his bodyguards and beating him with a champagne bottle and a chair. The executive, Steve Stoute, later asked prosecutors to go easy on Combs, who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and took an anger management class.
Later that same year, Combs was stopped by police after he and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, fled a nightclub where three people were wounded by gunfire. Combs was acquitted of all charges related to the episode at a 2001 trial, but a rapper in his entourage, Jamal “Shyne” Barrow, was convicted in the shooting and served nearly nine years in prison.
Then in 2015, Combs was charged with assaulting someone with a weight-room kettlebell at the University of California, Los Angeles, where one of his sons played football. Combs said he was defending himself and prosecutors dropped the case.
