One of the alternate jurors for the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial has spoken out about the controversial verdict, saying that he supports his peers’ decision to the disgraced mogul only partially guilty.
“I understood the final verdict,” the unnamed juror said during a Thursday, July 3, interview with Laura Coates on CNN. “I took a copious amount of notes overall, I think 350 pages worth of notes. Because at the end, we weren’t told who was an alternate, who was a main juror, until literally the last second, when the judge was reading his entire statement at the end.”
As an alternate, the juror did not deliberate with the 12 people who did, but he told Coates he would have delivered the same verdict.
“Reading all my notes, and looking back at the evidence, I probably would have reached the same conclusion as the other jurors,” he said.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Found Guilty of Transportation, Acquitted of Other Charges
The jury delivered their verdict on Wednesday, July 2, after less than three days of deliberation. They found Diddy, 55, guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but not guilty of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking. (The rapper pleaded not guilty to all charges following his September 2024 arrest.)
During the weeks-long trial, the jury, including the alternates, saw footage of the alleged “freak offs” that Diddy orchestrated with his ex-girlfriends and various sex workers. Spectators could not see the footage in court, but the juror who spoke to CNN claimed it was “very graphic.”
“If we’re looking at it from one side, it was definitely riveting and eye-opening,” he told Coates, adding that he didn’t think Cassie “didn’t seem forced” in the videos she appeared in. “It was actually pretty tame. It was a lot of rubbing oil and stuff on there. It wasn’t anything too graphic.”
Diddy Prosecution Ends Rebuttal by Reminding Jury ‘He’s Not a God’
Cassie, 38, testified for four days in May about the alleged physical and sexual abuse she experienced during her relationship with Diddy, which lasted off and on from 2007 to 2018. She previously accused him of abuse in a November 2023 lawsuit, which sparked the government’s investigation. She and Diddy settled that suit out of court one day after she filed.
Months after Diddy denied the allegations in Cassie’s lawsuit, CNN published surveillance footage of him physically assaulting her in 2016 at the InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles. The jury saw unedited footage of that attack during the trial, and Cassie claimed that it showed Diddy attempting to drag her back to a freak off she didn’t want to participate in. (Diddy publicly apologized for the video in a May 2024 Instagram post.)
The alternate juror who spoke to CNN agreed that the surveillance video was “very bad” but, like Diddy’s defense attorneys, noted that he was not charged with domestic violence.
How Long Will Diddy Be in Jail? His Possible Sentence Explained
Following the verdict, Diddy’s attorneys asked that he be released on bail, but Judge Arun Subramanian denied their request. For now, he remains incarcerated at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. His sentencing is scheduled for October 3, but there will be a remote hearing on Tuesday, July 8, to discuss the possibility of an expedited sentencing. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the two transportation charges, which each carry a maximum sentence of 10 years.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support. If you or someone you know is a human trafficking victim, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.
