June 30 (UPI) — Jurors in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ criminal trial deliberated for about five hours Monday and will resume Tuesday in the official court proceedings in Manhattan ended last week.
The 12 jurors finished at 5 p.m. and are set to come back the next day at 9 a.m.
About an hour into their deliberations, the jury just sent a note to Judge Arun Subramanianthey they are concerned one of the jurors cannot follow the judge’s instructions. The judge sent a note back reminding jurors they are obligated to follow his instructions on the law.
According to the note, the foreman asked to speak with the judge or to have juror No. 25 interviewed, which Tuerkheimer said is the next step. No. 25 is a 51-year-old man who works as a scientist and lives in Manhattan with his domestic partner.
The foreman, who was selected by the jury, is a 31-year-old man from Manhattan who works as an investment analyst.
“There’s a wild card on this jury and that is significant. It happened incredibly quickly. There’s a lot of give and take, back and forth,” Alan Tuerkheimer, a jury consultant and attorney not affiliated with the case, told CNN. “Deliberations can get incredibly heated and that’s part of the process. For the jurors to say that one juror is not going to follow the judge’s instructions, that is quite notable, especially at this early stage of the process.”
On June 16, the judge dismissed Juror No. 6 because of inconsistent disclosures about where he lives.
Then, there was another note at the end of the day that indicated they had a question for the judge. They wanted to know if a person who hands over controlled substances can be considered a distributor. Subramanian said he will respond to the jury in the morning after conferring with defense and prosecution attorneys.
Aubramanian gave the court’s pre-scripted instructions to the 12-person jury after entering the chamber shortly after 9 a.m. EDT.
“You have to decide which witnesses to believe and which facts are true,” the judge told jurors. But it’s unclear how long the panel will sit.
He asked them to consider the evidence and law as the more than hour-long process started, and defined the eight specific legal acts jurors can find that the disgraced entertainer or a co-conspirator committed.
“If you find that any witness has willfully testified falsely, you have the right to reject the testimony of that witness in its entirety,” Subramanian said.
He added that a witness “may be inaccurate or contradictory but be truthful or entirely credible in other parts of their testimony.”
The federal indictment charged Combs with conspiring with others to commit arson, bribery, kidnapping, forced labor, sex trafficking, transporting to engage in prostitution, witness tampering and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.
The jury of eight men and five women — all with a college or advanced degree — heard 34 witnesses in the nearly two-month-long trial describe harrowing testimony and explicit details of the hip hop mogul’s often violent and degrading sexual lifestyle that accompanied signs of psychological trauma.
Combs, 55, has an estimated $400 million net worth. He was arrested last year in September and remains in custody despite repeated bail attempts, confined in a special housing unit at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
He has vehemently denied all charges.
On Monday, he was reportedly smiling and in good spirits as he entered the court and hugged members of his defense team with Combs family members present in court.
After the jury was sent to deliberate, family members, including his children and his mother, stood, held hands and bowed their heads simultaneously. Then, they all started clapping.
On Friday, his legal team in closing arguments conceded but framed a choreographed world of violent and drug-fueled orgies but “one of the great modern love stories.”
“They have charged personal-use drugs and threesomes as racketeering,” Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo told jurors last week.
Closing arguments were Thursday and Friday after the federal government rested its case on Wednesday.
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