Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs have responded to his new indictment on federal intercourse crime fees. Their newest argument is that one of many fees comes from a legislation with a racist historical past that’s getting used in opposition to the rapper.
Combs’ protection attorneys filed a movement to dismiss one of many rapper’s fees from his three-count federal indictment. Attorneys beforehand argued that Combs solely ever had consensual sexual interactions and denied all allegations of intercourse abuse, blackmail and drug abuse, per courtroom paperwork.
Nevertheless, this time, attorneys argued that the White-Slave Site visitors Act, or Mann Act, is being weaponized in opposition to Combs regardless of its racist historical past. Attorneys wrote that one of many individuals who cosigned the invoice again within the early 1900s cited a narrative of a “Negro” who allegedly purchased and offered a white girl in Chicago, per courtroom paperwork. Amongst different racist connotations cited within the creation of the Mann Act, attorneys stated the legislation’s goal is “Black male sexuality.”
“From Jack Johnson to Chuck Berry, the statute’s most infamous prosecutions focused well-known black males accused of deviant sexual habits. This case continues the pattern,” the attorneys wrote.
As The Root beforehand reported, the act was a federal legislation created to make the usage of commerce to move girls for “immoral functions” unlawful, in keeping with Cornell Regulation College’s Authorized Data Institute. Again then, the legislation spawned from the investigation into immigrant prostitution and the declare immigrant males lured younger white girls into what they known as “white slavery.” Nevertheless, the time period “immoral goal” was broadly utilized in lots of instances, particularly consensual sexual relations between white girls and Black males.
Apart from racism, attorneys additionally argued Combs is the primary defendant to be charged underneath the Mann Act for hiring male escorts from a web site whose title was redacted from the doc. Attorneys wrote that any high-profile white man prior (whereas name-dropping New York Governor Eliot Spitzer) who engaged a 3rd get together for sexual relations by no means triggered prosecution underneath the Mann Act.
Due to this fact, Combs is being discriminated in opposition to as a result of he’s a profitable Black movie star and such discrimination is grounds for rely three of transportation to have interaction in prostitution needs to be dismissed, his attorneys consider.
Combs is going through that cost together with racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking and transportation to have interaction in prostitution in opposition to allegedly three victims. He’s pleaded not responsible and was denied bond. He awaits his Might 2025 trial behind bars in Metropolitan Detention Heart Brooklyn.