Judge denies Diddy's lawyers' push for mistrial, sex-crimes trial to continue
The judge in Sean "Diddy" Combs' federal sex-crimes case has denied his bid for a mistrial.
The move came amid testimony during the third week of the trial, in which Combs, 55, is charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty and long maintained his innocence.
Midway during court proceedings on May 28, Combs' lawyers moved for a mistrial, arguing that prosecutors were improperly trying to suggest that the hip-hop mogul had evidence tied to an alleged arson incident destroyed.
Defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro contended, without the jury present, that the line of questioning by prosecutors was designed to infer that "Mr. Combs could buy his way out of this (investigation into the break-in and firebombing). We believe the questions were designed to play right into that."
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian swiftly denied the request. "There was absolutely no testimony from the witness that was prejudicial in any way shape or form," Subramanian said.
During testimony, Lance Jimenez of the Los Angeles Fire Department recalled a 2012 incident in which an explosion wrecked a Porsche owned by Scott Mescudi, professionally known as Kid Cudi.
Jimenez testified that the Los Angeles Police Department was in charge of doing fingerprint analysis after the car explosion, and said he had "no idea" if fingerprints were recovered. There were prints from the glass on the front door from a previous trespassing incident, when Cudi's house was broken into, he said, but the print cards were destroyed in August 2012 without Jimenez's knowledge.
When prosecutors asked if it was unusual for someone who was not on Jimenez's team to order evidence to be destroyed, he confirmed it was.
"I'm gonna object to all of this, judge," Marc Agnifilo, Combs' lead defense attorney, said, before they took a long sidebar and then a break.
Shapiro said that the initial questions about whether the prints were destroyed was legitimate, but that prosecutors acted inappropriately by questioning whether Jimenez authorized the prints to be destroyed and whether he thought it was unusual that they had been destroyed by somebody at LAPD.
One of the prosecutors, Emily Johnson, told the judge that the move for a mistrial was "absolutely unwarranted here," and could be easily cured by jury instructions.
After a lengthy back-and-forth, with the prosecution arguing that it would be prejudicial to their case for the judge to tell the jury that their line of questioning was improper, Subramanian ruled that he would instruct the jury to disregard the entire line of questioning.
On May 27, Combs' lawyers moved to have Mescudi's previous comments suggesting the record executive was "lying" about his knowledge of the explosion removed from the record.
Contributing: Reuters; Anna Kaufman, Paste BN