Will the Jury Find Diddy Guilty? An Expert Explains Why the Case Is So Tricky.

The government has remained its case against Sean Combs, marking the beginning of the end of one of the highest-profile federal trials of the year. From fraught testimony by former employees to a juror dismissal and influences crossing lines , this trial has been a handful. Now the biggest question is the main one: Did the government nail its case against Combs?

Juries can be unpredictable. And this case is specifically complicated, as it's not even about whether Combs was physically abusive to his former partner Casandra Ventura, the star witness. Combs is on trial for racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution—though, on Wednesday , the prosecution decided not to pursue three of his racketeering charges, including the kidnapping and arrest claims. (It will still pursue the many remaining racketeering allegations of bribery, sex trafficking, drug-related offenses, and forced labor.) To help make sense of the likelihood of Combs' conviction, I spoke with Lara Bazelon, a law professor and director of the University of San Francisco School of Law's Racial Justice Clinic. Our interview, which was conducted before this week's news about the dropped racketeering charges, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Slate: As the government lawyers begin to wrap up their case, is it looking like they did a good job? The most direct question people have is: Do you think that Sean Combs is going to get off?

Lara Bazelon: Well, I feel like only a fool would predict what a jury is going to do. You just don't know. Those are 12 people. They have dynamics internal to them that are impossible to read. Because juries themselves are so finicky and mercurial and 12-person-specific, it's impossible to predict.

But the bigger question, I guess, is—let's assume that these are 12 completely objective, fair-minded people who are there to do the right thing, which is apply the facts—did the government do a good job? And I think that the answer is, they did a good job with what they had, but is what they have enough?

To me, the crux of this case comes down to coercion, whether or not you think there was coercion or consent. And that, I feel like, is going to be the debate that's going to drive the deliberations. Because to prove the most serious charges—the trafficking, transportation for prostitution, the sexual assault, the allegations that have attracted the most astonishment and opprobrium and liability—they turn on force, fraud, or coercion. Those are the ways that you get from a sex act to a sexual assault.

Combs' team is saying, “Look, is he a nice guy? No. Did he punch Cassie Ventura on video? Yes. Is he on trial for that? No. Is he on trial for being a nice guy or a good boyfriend? No. He has some interesting sexual tastes, and he was with people who were willing to let him indulge in those by participating in them. And they did that with their eyes wide open. Look at their texts, look at the things they did to facilitate the ‘freak-off’—this is not coercion.” And then, from the prosecution's side, you have them saying, “Well, he basically held their lives in his hands. And what is more coercive than saying to somebody, essentially, 'If you don't do this, I am going to release embarrassing information about you. If you don't do this, I'm going to cut off your career opportunities. If you don't do this, I'm going to make your life really, really difficult, and I'm an incredibly rich and powerful person, so you best believe that I can make good on these threats'?” And I don't know where the jury is exactly going to come down on that, because it's not your standard case, I don't think, in a lot of ways.

And there's a playbook. The playbook is R. Kelly and Young Thug , to say that these men had these enterprises that looked legitimate on the surface but actually were just fronts for committing a whole bunch of incredibly serious crimes. And that playbook really turns on Does the jury think there was coercion, at least in the cases where there wasn't obvious force or fear? And I don't know. That's a really interesting question.

You said that this isn't your standard case. In what ways is this different from any other federal sex trafficking or racketeering case?

So I tried one of these cases twice, because the jury hung the first time, and then I tried it again and he was convicted. And I feel like that was a more typical case, in the sense that this government was someone who called a pimp. His enterprise is pimping and pandering. He's not running a record label called Bad Boy Records. He's a pimp: He used force, fraud, and coercion to get these girls to work for him as prostitutes. That's a very standard case. And it's federal because they cross state lines to go to various places, to perform acts of prostitution, and also because there's a federal statute that specifically criminalizes pimping and pandering even within state lines. I feel like it was much more typical and simple to understand. It was like, This was his business, this is what he did. He pimped people out; he had this woman who was his wife but basically his arch recruiter. And then she was going on and recruiting people, and you're going to hear from her, and you're going to hear from them. And that seemed much more straightforward, and even then the jury hung the first time.

Here, you have to believe that this multimillion-dollar business that was record labels, clothing, and promoting the careers of really important artists is really at heart a criminal enterprise. And that is a more complicated case to make when you have a legitimate business. It's incorporated, it's paying taxes, it's advancing people's careers, it's making money. So that's what I mean when I say I just don't think it's as straightforward. Same thing with Young Thug. He had a record label and they're saying, “Well, pay no attention to the record label. This was a street gang.” And it's like, Well, I guess, but pay no more attention to the record label? He was also putting out a lot of music. It's harder, I think, when the defendant isn't your sort of standard street criminal and instead is this very respected, successful artist and entrepreneur. And then what you're being told is that that was really just a facade in a lot of ways for them to be the worst kind of criminal.

And you say it's harder, but the thing that I'm gleaning from the story about the case you personally tried is that even regularly it's still hard, right?

Stuff can fall apart. Witnesses' testimony can fall apart. Sometimes the victims are complicated people who aren't always being entirely straightforward, whose accounts aren't always so easy to follow. And obviously the defense is going to underscore and point out every inconsistency and say, “These people are out for themselves. This is all about money and their 15 minutes of fame, and you can't trust them. Like, look at how happy they are on Instagram, these pictures, and now they've turned on him because it's helpful for them, but at the time they were more than happy to go along with it.”

You hear many different opinions and reactions to testimony in the court's overflow rooms, where you run the whole gamut of people, from other journalists, to members of the public who are just interested, to other lawyers, some prominent. So it is really fascinating to see people's reactions, because I do think of us as a sort of surrogate jury.

You are a surrogate jury. And that just goes back to the larger point, which is that juries are really complicated, diverse bodies, and they're not necessarily perfectly post–#MeToo educated either. They have their own life experiences that they're drawing from. And the thing is, you only need one person to be like, “I'm sorry, I don't believe that it was coerced, I don't” to hang a whole jury. And I think that that's what Combs' lawyers are counting on, and I don't think that that's crazy. I think that's a reasonable strategy.

The other thing about these cases is that the punishments are so massive. So if he's convicted, he's going to get life in prison. And in the federal system, he's going to die there because there's no parole. We abolished parole. And jurors can't know—they're not supposed to know—but you have to wonder if some of that has leaked out, because every article about this case says he's looking at life in prison. So if even one juror understands or is aware of the oversized nature of the punishment, they might just be like, “I'm not comfortable sending a 55-year-old to die in prison when he didn't kill anyone.” Also, it could be mixed in with their respect for him as an artist and entrepreneur and all those things. So I feel like there's the celebrity factor, which also makes it really unusual.

Could you explain more about the sentences for the different charges Combs is facing?

The one that carries potential life is the racketeering conspiracy. Then there's two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion—that's also a maximum sentence of life, and it has a mandatory minimum. So those are the big ones.

Again, it's not a “typical” racketeering case. A typical racketeering case would be the mob, right? And their legitimate business enterprise is, say, the sewage system, but really they're doing all kinds of things that they shouldn't be doing that are completely illegitimate. Saying that Bad Boy Records is a criminal enterprise, I think, is a bigger lift because you can point to all of the things that it was doing that were legitimate.

When talking about RICO cases and evidence, I think about The Wire . That was a five-season-long TV show in which members of law enforcement spent most of their time collecting evidence and building a case via wiretap. We don't have that level, that mountain, of evidence here. It really is just “he said, she said.”

That's exactly right. I mean, there's some corroborating evidence. Like, there's the video footage of him physically abusing Cassie. But, again, does that go to the ultimate question of When she was participating in these freak-offs, was it because of that looming consequence? You have to take an extra step. You have to take that 2016 footage and say that that's what was in the back of her mind every time she was participating, or saying she was excited to participate, or helping set it up.

It's interesting that the prosecution played these tiny snippets of the freak-offs, then the defense played solid five-minute chunks, thinking they're helpful. They're hoping that footage is exculpatory, which is kind of wild, right? To think that what a lot of people would think is beyond-the-pale sexual activity is actually the thing that's going to exculpate him. That's a really interesting gamble.

I also think we're not fully in a place where we understand addiction and drug use .

That's right. We're not. Of course, the defense is going to say, “Yeah, well, they took those drugs willingly. They wanted to be on drugs.” But if your body was stuffed full of MDMA and Xanax and all the other things, are you even capable of consenting at that point?

And there's the additional question: Would those drugs make it seem as though you're enjoying the sexual activity even if you're not?

Right. If you're on Molly and you think everything's great, including having sex with multiple male prostitutes at the same time, is that really what you were thinking? The fact that there's 12 jurors is probably giving his defense a lot of hope.

What would be a smoking gun in a sex-trafficking/racketeering case like this?

I mean, the ultimate one would be that there'd be a freak-off video, and he's literally standing there with a gun or baseball bat, and it's really obvious that if you don't do this, “I'm going to really, really hurt you.” That would be one. Also, written communications where a person's saying, “I really don't want to do this,” and he's saying, “Well, if you don't, I'm going to release the other time that you did it and ruin your life” or “If you don't, I'm going to come for your family.”

What's not a smoking gun are intimate partner violence relationships, which are subject to interpretation, including from the jury. Because inevitably with IPV, it's the roller coaster, right? It's the honeymoon phase, things getting really dark, the pulling away, and then it's the making up again, the consensual sex following the nonconsensual sex. “So you're a pig and I'm leaving,” followed by “I love you so much. I can't wait to participate in the next freak-off.” That's a more complicated narrative, and that's the kind of narrative, I think, that the #MeToo era was really centered on explaining to people as a legitimate narrative of sexual assault. But I think whether that educational project has been successful is not clear.

Is there something the prosecution has only touched on that you wished the team had explored more?

It doesn't seem like the staff people who are testing are that helpful to the government. They're saying things like “Yeah, he could sometimes be a jerk. But also, he's been so helpful to me, and I didn't really see anything directly myself.” I mean, some of them corroborate bits and pieces of stories, but the indictment is so clear—Sean Combs and his associates —and you get the sense that there's this team of people helping to carry it out. And other than his chief of staff, who are those people? And if it is this army of sycophants and foot soldiers, where are they and what are their names and what were they doing? “I worked for him for a long time, and he was mostly amazing but kind of a jerk”—that's not what the indictment is telling us. It's telling us something different.