Prosecutors in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking case want to introduce a slew of evidence of his alleged past sexual assaults — a move Combs said is an unfair bid to put on a “horror show” for jurors at his upcoming trial.
Southern District of New York feds revealed Monday that they plan to include testimony about “sexual abuse of other victims” at Combs’ trial on charges of forcing lovers into drug-fueled, days-long sex marathons dubbed “Freak-Offs,” and running Bad Boy Records as a criminal enterprise, court filings showed.
Jurors should get to hear the new evidence to combat Combs’ claim that the accusers slated to testify against him consented to their encounters, prosecutors argued. His trial is set to begin May 5.
The new proposed testimony “powerfully establishes that the defendant made no mistake when he coerced other victims into unwanted sex,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. “It proves that the defendant intended to take the sexual gratification he wanted, regardless of consent.”
The feds did not disclose any specifics about the prior alleged sexual assaults in the heavily redacted court papers. But a separate legal filing from Combs’ attorneys said that several of the allegations mirror the shocking allegations lodged against the jailed hip-hop impresario in civil lawsuits.
Combs, 55, has been accused in the suits of drugging and raping both men and women over a decades-long period, including an up-and-coming musician in Los Angeles and a 16-year-old New York City babysitter. He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in his criminal case.
Lawyers for the “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper urged a Manhattan judge Monday to block the feds from calling the new witnesses, arguing that letting them testify would prejudice the jury against him.
“The government should not be permitted to pollute the trial with decades of dirt and invite a conviction based on propensity evidence with no proper purpose by painting Mr. Combs as a bad guy who must have committed the charged crimes,” they wrote.
Combs’ lawyers added that the allegations, which the feds disclosed to them in a March 7 letter, amount to a “horror show the government seeks to put on for the jury.”
“These are entirely new, untested, uncorroborated, and uninvestigated allegations,” the filing read. “All but one of the alleged incidents happened over twenty years ago, with the oldest dating to the 1980s. Some of the allegations are demonstrably false but would nonetheless require an enormous amount of trial time to disprove.”
Combs’ camp argued that new accusations should be barred from his trial because they are far “worse” than the allegations of coerced sex and violent assaults that Combs is already charged with.
But the feds fired back, saying the witnesses already slated to take the stand will give “graphic testimony” about “years’ worth of beatings, drug-fueled coercive sex marathons, and multiple rapes.”
Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura is expected to testify against him, along with three other alleged victims who have asked to use pseudonyms when they take the stand.