NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs received a standing ovation from fellow inmates upon his return to jail following his acquittal on charges that could have led to life in prison. His lawyer believes this reaction might be the most impactful thing he could do for Black incarcerated men in America.
“They all said: ‘We never get to see anyone who beats the government,’” Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, told The Associated Press during a weekend interview, days after a jury found Combs not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges.
Combs, 55, is still being held in a federal detention facility in Brooklyn after his conviction last Wednesday on prostitution-related charges, which could extend his imprisonment by several more years. His sentence will account for the almost 10 months of time served so far.
After federal agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami in March 2024, Agnifilo said he told Combs to expect to be arrested on sex trafficking charges.
“I said: ‘Maybe it’s your fate in life to be the guy who wins,’” he recalled during a telephone interview briefly interrupted by a jailhouse call from Combs. “They need to see that someone can win. I think he took that to heart.”
Blunt trial strategy works
The verdict in Manhattan federal court came after a veteran team of eight defense lawyers led by Agnifilo executed a trial strategy that resonated with jurors. Combs passed lawyers notes during effective cross-examinations of nearly three dozen witnesses over two months, including Combs’ ex-employees.
The lawyers told jurors Combs was a jealous domestic abuser with a drug problem who participated in the swinger lifestyle through threesomes involving Combs, his girlfriends and another man.
“You may think to yourself, wow, he is a really bad boyfriend,” Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors in her May opening statement. But that, she said, “is simply not sex trafficking.”
Agnifilo said the blunt talk was a “no brainer.”
“The violence was so clear and up front and we knew the government was going to try to confuse the jury into thinking it was part of a sex trafficking effort. So we had to tell the jury what it was so they wouldn’t think it was something it wasn’t,” he said.
Combs and his lawyers seemed deflated Tuesday when jurors said they were deadlocked on the racketeering count but reached a verdict on sex trafficking and lesser prostitution-related charges. A judge ordered them back to deliberate Wednesday.
“No one knows what to think,” Agnifilo said. Then he slept on it.
Morning surprise awakes lawyer
“I wake up at three in the morning and I text Teny and say: ”We have to get a bail application together,” he recalled. “It’s going to be a good verdict for us but I think he went down on the prostitution counts so let’s try to get him out.”
He said he “kind of whipped everybody into feeling better” after concluding jurors would have convicted him of racketeering if they had convicted him of sex trafficking because trafficking was an alleged component of racketeering.
Agnifilo met with Combs before court and Combs entered the courtroom rejuvenated. Smiling, the onetime Catholic schoolboy prayed with family. In less than an hour, the jury matched Agnifilo’s prediction.
The seemingly chastened Combs mouthed “thank you” to jurors and smiled as family and supporters applauded. After he was escorted from the room, spectators cheered the defense team, a few chanting: “Dream Team! Dream Team!” Several lawyers, including Geragos, cried.
“This was a major victory for the defense and a major loss for the prosecution,” said Mitchell Epner, a lawyer who worked with Agnifilo as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey over two decades ago. He credited “a dream team of defense lawyers” against prosecutors who almost always win.
Agnifilo showcased what would become his trial strategy — belittling the charges and mocking the investigation that led to them — last September in arguing unsuccessfully for bail. The case against Combs was what happens when the “federal government comes into our bedrooms,” he said.
Lawyers gently questioned most witnesses
During an eight-week trial, Combs’ lawyers picked apart the prosecution case with mostly gentle but firm cross-examinations. Combs never testified and his lawyers called no witnesses.
Sarah Krissoff, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, said Combs’ defense team “had a narrative from the beginning and they did all of it without putting on any witnesses. That’s masterful.”
Ironically, Agnifilo expanded the use of racketeering laws as a federal prosecutor on an organized crime task force in New Jersey two decades ago, using them often to indict street gangs in violence-torn cities.
“I knew the weak points in the statute,” he said. “The statute is very mechanical. If you know how the car works, you know where the fail points are.”
He said prosecutors had “dozens of fail points.”
“They didn’t have a conspiracy, they just didn’t,” he said. “They basically had Combs’ personal life and tried to build racketeering around personal assistants.”
Some personal assistants, even after viewing videos of Combs beating his longtime girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, had glowing things to say about Combs on cross examination.
Once freed, Combs likely to reenter domestic abusers program
For Combs, Agnifilo sees a long road ahead once he is freed as he works on personal demons, likely reentering a program for domestic batterers that he had just started before his arrest.
“He’s doing OK,” said Agnifilo, who speaks with him four or five times daily.
He said Combs genuinely desires improvement and “realizes he has flaws like everyone else that he never worked on.”
“He burns hot in all matters. I think what he has come to see is that he has these flaws and there’s no amount of fame and no amount of fortune” that can erase them,” he said. “You can’t cover them up.”
For Agnifilo, a final surprise awaited him after Combs’ bail was rejected when a man collapsed into violent seizures at the elevators outside the courtroom.
“I’m like: ‘What the hell?’” recalled the lawyer schooled in treating seizures.
Agnifilo straddled him, pulling him onto his side and using a foot to prevent him from rolling backward while a law partner, Jacob Kaplan, put a backpack under the man’s head and Agnifilo’s daughter took his pulse.
“We made sure he didn’t choke on vomit. It was crazy. I was worried about him,” he said.
The man was eventually taken away conscious by rescue workers, leaving Agnifilo to ponder a tumultuous day.
“It was like I was getting punked by God,” he said.
