By: Michael J. McConnell, New York Personal Injury Attorney
As I mentioned in my blog post about the Diddy Trial last week, the case probably comes down to which narrative the jury believes. Was Diddy more akin to a mafia boss running a criminal organization? Or was he more like someone just living a swinger lifestyle?
I thought the government scored a few points on this subject last week through Kid Cudi’s testimony where the takeaway for the jury was that Diddy blew up Kid Cudi’s car after he started dating Cassie Ventura, who by the way is the key witness in the case.
The reason I found that testimony important was that the government really wants to get Diddy on the racketeering charge, which is punishable by up to life in prison. Racketeering is basically an offense you typically see charged in mafia cases because it has to do with engaging in a criminal enterprise. So the more the government can make Diddy look like a mafia boss, the more they are likely to convince the jury he was running a criminal enterprise.
That government continued this framing of the case today when it called his ex-assistant, Capricorn Clark, to the witness stand. Among the things she testified about was how Diddy:
- threatened her the first day on the job;
- kidnapped her with a gun to go to Kid Cudi’s home after finding out that he was involved with Cassie and said that he was going to kill Kid Cudi;
- had his bodyguard bring Ms. Clark to an abandoned apartment building to undergo a lie detector test after Diddy’s jewelry went missing where Ms. Clark was told during the test that if she failed she would be thrown into the East River (apparently she was brought back to this abandoned apartment for a lie detector test for 5 straight days before being allowed to work again)
Does any of that testimony have to do all that much with the sex trafficking offenses Diddy is charged with? Not really – at least not directly. But what it does tend to do is to frame Diddy as the equivalent of a mob boss.
Why? Well because unless you’re working for a criminal enterprise, you typically don’t get threatened the first day on the job, kidnapped with a gun, or forced to undergo a lie detector test for 5 straight days that if you fail will result in you being thrown into a river. And you know what else, unless you’re in the mob, your boss probably isn’t going around blowing up a rival’s car.
As I said in my last post, there is a long way to go, but for Diddy to get acquitted he needs the jury to believe this is all much ado about nothing and that he was just engaged in unusual sexual practices. The more he looks like a really bad guy, the more the jury is likely to convict. That is just reality. Beyond that and even worse for Diddy is that the more evidence the government puts forth that makes him look like a mafia don, the easier it gets for the jury to convict on the racketeering charge, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.