00:00Diddy acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering.
00:03I'm Carlos Greer, senior reporter of Page Six, and I've got questions.
00:07Lisa Bonner, entertainment lawyer, former litigator and legal correspondent.
00:12What's your reaction to this verdict?
00:16Carlos, you and I have been talking for the last seven weeks.
00:19We have been talking regularly.
00:20We have been going through the charges.
00:22And to say that I am flabbergasted would be an understatement.
00:28But again, I understand how the verdicts work in terms of the legalities of it.
00:34The RICO charge and the sex trafficking charges are a high bar for laypeople to understand.
00:42But the jury has spoken, and we accept what they have said, and now we move forward.
00:49But it is important to note that Sean Combs' legal trials and legal issues are far from over.
00:55So, you know, he's not facing life in prison because, you know, he's not facing life in prison.
01:01How much time is he now facing?
01:02What was he guilty of?
01:04He was, Sean Combs was found guilty of transportation for the purposes of prostitution.
01:09And that carries a maximum of 10 years.
01:12And you look at the sentencing guidelines, that is a maximum.
01:16But the judges have wide latitude and wide discretion on implementing the sentence.
01:21So what the judge will be looking for is the priors, the fact that Sean Combs has no priors.
01:27He was not convicted of any type of act that is a violent act.
01:34So he was convicted on the least serious of all the offenses.
01:38So in terms of sentencing, I would estimate somewhere between 18 and 24 months maximum.
01:46But we don't know.
01:47It is up to the judge.
01:48Sean could actually go home this afternoon.
01:51The judge has asked the prosecution and the defense to send in their letters in support of allowing Sean to go home while he awaits sentencing or serve the time in MDC while he awaits sentencing.
02:06I do believe, considering the verdict and considering all that we have seen, that Sean will most likely serve this time at home.
02:14Wow.
02:14So, I mean, obviously, this is a huge win for Diddy.
02:17It's a big victory for his defense team and for him, just judging by his reaction and his family's reaction.
02:24It is.
02:24Sean was looking at life up to life in prison.
02:26And if he were convicted on the sex trafficking acts as an individual, those carried a period of 15 years.
02:33So to look at what he could have gotten into what he could get in terms of the 18 to 24 months, again, that is my estimation.
02:42We don't know.
02:43But that is a huge win for Sean Combs.
02:46Again, this is something that has stunned a lot of us in the legal profession.
02:51And some people really did see this was a high bar.
02:54But from a legal perspective, understanding the RICO charge and how difficult it is for jurors to understand, ordinary persons, lay people to understand, it's not surprising.
03:06But the jury has spoken.
03:07And like I said, we must accept that.
03:09Why didn't the RICO charge stick, do you think?
03:14The RICO charge was very difficult to understand because you have a issue of it's multifaceted and multilayered, if you will.
03:24Firstly, to convict someone of RICO, you have to find that they used the criminal enterprise, this business of him,
03:31and used persons and commercial resources from the criminal enterprise in furtherance of the sex trafficking crimes.
03:41So you have to find that Sean sex trafficked these people first, the alleged victims first.
03:47And then you have to find that he was guilty by force, fraud, or coercion.
03:52And then you go down the rabbit hole of predicate acts.
03:55And predicate acts are what we've been talking about over these past several weeks.
04:00Arson, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, forced labor.
04:03There was eight of those.
04:04And so it's a very complicated, divergent issue and set of facts that is difficult to process in terms of what the jury would be asked to implement
04:20and ask them to really deconstruct 50 pages of jury instructions during that time.
04:25So it is very difficult to understand.
04:27And we've talked about this over time and time again.
04:29And I saw it, what I thought, too, that the judges, excuse me, that the jurors were chiming in on.
04:36But apparently the jurors did not come and find that this was a bar that could have been met unanimously.
04:45Lisa, Diddy's reputation obviously has forever changed, his life and reputation.
04:49He's facing a gazillion civil lawsuits.
04:52And he's definitely not the flashy cars and yachts guy that we saw up until now.
04:57You know, so I don't know if you can answer this, but how do you think this is going to affect his wealth and his place in pop culture?
05:04Well, in terms of his wealth, he has 70 or so civil suits that need to be dealt with.
05:11So that is one.
05:12So in terms of his wealth, he's going to be paying lawyers to defend those.
05:15In terms of pop culture, I understand that they are looking already to have a party for him and his release.
05:21And it's important to understand that he had a large contingent of people that were behind him and were in support of him.
05:28And Americans, we are very forgiven, especially in the black community.
05:32We are very forgiving.
05:33And in terms of that, you know, there it's still a divide.
05:37And there are still people that do believe that he was guilty of these charges.
05:41But again, only thing that matters is what the jury has stated.
05:45You know, does the verdict, does it affect the civil suits, do you think?
05:48In a way it does, because the civil suits are a lower burden of proof where you have beyond a reasonable doubt in the in the criminal trial.
05:57You have a lower threshold, which is beyond the preponderance of the evidence.
06:03And so you can use the fact that he was not found guilty at such a high level in terms of the charges.
06:10So that is de facto evidence.
06:13But again, it is very difficult and it depends on certain rules of evidence, but it could be used in terms of the civil case.
06:20Lisa, it's always great to see you.
06:21And thank you for joining me every week to recap the Sean Diddy Combs trial.
06:26To rewatch our analysis, visit PageSix.com and watch us on YouTube.
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