NEW YORK (news agencies) — Sean “Diddy” Combs got a standing ovation from fellow inmates when the music mogul returned to jail after winning acquittals on potential life-in-prison charges, providing what his lawyer says might have been the best thing he could do for Black incarcerated men in America.
“They all said: ‘We never get to see anyone who beats the government,’” attorney Marc Agnifilo said in a weekend interview days after a jury acquitted Combs of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges.
Combs, 55, remains jailed after his Wednesday conviction on prostitution-related charges and could still face several years in prison at an upcoming sentencing after being credited for 10 months already served.
After federal agents raided his homes in Los Angeles and Miami in March 2024, the lawyer said he told Combs to expect arrest 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.”
The verdict 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.
“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.
