Diddy’s authorized staff is preventing prosecutors over display screen jurors, citing intense media bias and privateness considerations.
Diddy’s legal staff and federal prosecutors are as soon as once more at odds—this time over how jurors needs to be screened within the Hip-Hop mogul’s blockbuster intercourse trafficking and racketeering trial.
In keeping with a joint submitting submitted to Choose Arun Subramanian on April 11, each side have been ordered to hammer out a proposed jury questionnaire—however as a substitute ended up in a full-blown impasse over what questions needs to be requested.
And whereas Diddy’s attorneys didn’t object to a lot of the authorities’s wording, they argue all the doc misses one obtrusive situation: media bias.
“The federal government’s proposal doesn’t discover in any respect the prejudices and biases which might be central to an efficient inquiry to seating a good jury,” his attorneys complained. “The protection believes it is necessary that we enable potential jurors to put in writing candidly concerning the unprecedented and destructive media consideration that they could have been uncovered to, associated to Mr. Combs.”
Diddy—who’s going through critical federal costs, together with racketeering conspiracy, intercourse trafficking, and transporting ladies for prostitution—has grow to be a family identify for all of the flawed causes.
Prosecutors say his trial will embody express movies of assaults, proof of drug-fueled intercourse events, and testimony from former associates who declare they have been a part of a cross-country trafficking ring.
His attorneys say that’s exactly why jurors needs to be screened earlier than strolling right into a courtroom—not whereas being stared down by a room filled with strangers.
As a part of their proposed modifications, Diddy’s staff desires to vet potential jurors on a variety of subjects—together with their private experiences with home violence, substance abuse, and sexual content material, in addition to their consolation stage viewing graphic movies.
“Many people are uncomfortable talking about these points in entrance of others and could be extra candid writing about them in a questionnaire,” the submitting famous.
To bolster their argument, they pointed to the 2018 trial of NXIVM cult chief Keith Raniere, the place a choose allowed almost an identical inquiries to display screen for bias because of the case’s “delicate and personal” nature.
Regardless of their variations, each side did agree on a proposed every day trial schedule. However the true fireworks will come if Choose Subramanian sides with prosecutors—doubtlessly leaving Diddy to select a jury in a courtroom already buzzing with media consideration and public opinion.