NEW YORK – A judge dismissed a juror in the sex trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs on Monday after concluding that his conflicting answers about where he lives might indicate he had an agenda or wanted to stay on the jury for a purpose.
Judge Arun Subramanian made the ruling after rejecting arguments by Combs’ attorneys that it would disrupt the diversity of the jury to replace the Black man with a white juror.
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Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges after his September arrest at a New York hotel. He was denied bail multiple times and has remained incarcerated at a federal lockup in Brooklyn ever since.
Subramanian had first announced late Friday that he was dismissing the juror after questions arose over whether he resided in New York or New Jersey most of the time, but multiple defense lawyers protested and the judge waited until Monday to announce his final decision.
The judge said a review of the juror's answers to questions about his residency during jury selection, along with his subsequent responses to similar questions in the robing room, revealed “clear inconsistencies.”
“Taking these all together, the record raised serious concerns as to the juror's candor and whether he shaded answers to get on and stay on the jury,” he said.
Subramanian said to leave the juror on the panel could threaten the integrity of the judicial process, and he rejected a defense request that he question him further, saying it could lead to “another set of shifting answers. … In other words, there’s nothing that the juror can say at this point that would put the genie back in the bottle and restore his credibility.”
The judge expressed disappointment that the defense asked him again in a weekend letter to consider the racial makeup of the jury in his ruling as it accused prosecutors of misconduct.
“The court should not, indeed cannot, let race factor into the decision of what happens. Here, the answer is clear. Juror No. 6 is excused,” Subramanian said before the jury, minus Juror No. 6, was brought into the courtroom for the resumption of testimony.
Defense lawyers in the letter also accused prosecutors of misconduct in a “coordinated effort to try to destroy one of the most successful Black men in American history.”
“The government’s case is all about his personal life, and what he and his romantic partners have done in the privacy of the bedroom,” the lawyers wrote.
“There has been no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct brought to the court's attention. Zero,” the judge said, rejecting the defense's third request for a mistrial.
Prosecutors have said they expect to rest sometime this week. The trial is in its sixth week.
On Monday, prosecutors called what’s known as a summary witness to read aloud numerous text messages that jurors hadn’t previously heard.
They included exchanges in which the woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane" complained to Combs about their “hotel night” and “wild king night” sex marathon lifestyle and to his chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, about his threats to release explicit videos of her having sex with other men.
Jane, who dated Combs from 2021 until his arrest last year, excoriated the hip-hop star in a series of text messages after his former longtime girlfriend Cassie, the R&B singer whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit against him alleging years of sexual abuse, control and violence.
On Nov. 28, 2023, about two weeks after Combs settled the lawsuit, Jane told him that she felt he exploited her with their “dark and humiliating lifestyle.” She wrote that for the three years they were together, she felt confused by their relationship and that being with Combs had deprived her of work opportunities.
A month later, Jane texted Khorram that Combs “just threatened me about my sex tapes that he has on two phones. He said he would send them to my baby daddy.”
Jane noted that she didn’t typically involve Khorram in such matters, but said she needed help because Combs was having one of his “evil-ass psychotic bipolar” episodes and, along with threatening her, was saying he’d call the police on her.
Jane told Khorram that she was heavily drugged in the tapes.