“Love you!” Sean Combs yelled to his family from across a courtroom barrier. “I’m gonna be home soon!”
The 17 family members, filling two rows of seats in the lower Manhattan federal courtroom, cheered and clapped. They bent over the wooden benches to embrace each other.
“Dream team! Dream team!” they chanted in jubilation as Combs was taken back into the custody of US Marshals. The judge said he’d decide later in the day whether to let him walk free before a yet-scheduled sentencing.
After about two days of tense jury deliberations and six weeks of trial testimony, jurors acquitted Combs on Wednesday morning of three of the most serious counts against him, for racketeering and for sex trafficking two women.
They found him guilty of two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, which are Mann Act charges. Combs, who is 55 years old, could still be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, but was no longer facing the prospect of a life sentence.
Before the jurors entered the courtroom Wednesday morning to deliver their verdict, US District Judge Arun Subramanian asked the people watching to “maintain order while the verdict is being read.”
The jury foreman, a 31-year-old investment analyst from Manhattan, stood holding a cordless microphone in his right hand and the verdict in his left. Both hands remained steady as he read Combs’ fate out loud.
The jury, he announced, had found him not guilty of racketeering, the most complex count.
Then the foreman moved on to the charge of sex trafficking Cassie Ventura.
Also not guilty.
Members of Combs’ family and his supporters whooped and cheered.
They stayed quiet as the foreman finished reading the verdict. Combs’ mother, Janice Combs, had her arm around her grandson, Christian, seated to her right.
Sean Combs turned around to face his family and clasped his hands together, pointing his fingers to the sky. Next to him, his attorneys Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos hugged each other from their seats.
After the verdict was read, Agnifilo asked the judge to allow Combs to simply walk out of the courtroom and go home.
Combs had been acquitted of the most serious charges, Agnfilo said, and he had his entire family there to sign a $1 million bond that would ensure he’d return for sentencing. Combs “would be nothing short of a fool” to throw away his freedom by fleeing before his sentencing, Agnifilo said.
“Mr Combs has been given his life by this jury,” Agnifilo told Subramanian. “He was charged with counts that could have given him life in prison. And he’s going to get far, far less than that. He’s going to have his life.”
Subramanian asked the prosecutors and defense lawyers to craft legal arguments over the issue and said he’d decide later in the day.
After the judge left the bench and marshals ushered people out of the courtroom, Combs turned around and knelt on his chair, as if in prayer.
After a few moments, he got up and looked at his family, who erupted in cheers and claps and hugged each other.
Combs, still physically separated from his family, embraced his lawyers. He told his children that he’d be home soon and walked with the marshals back into the court’s holding area. Supporters entered into chants of “Dream team!”
The defense lawyers hugged each other — the female members in tears — as the prosecution team filed out of the courtroom, their faces stony.
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