NEW YORK (AP) — Jury choice resumed for a second day within the intercourse trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs as a federal choose and legal professionals labored Tuesday to discover a dozen New Yorkers who imagine they are often honest regardless of any opinions they could have developed in regards to the music mogul.
Prosecutors say Combs exploited his fame and fortune to sexually abuse girls and destroy younger lives whereas protection attorneys say he engaged in sexual exercise with consenting adults.
The vast majority of potential jurors questioned on Tuesday morning had been disqualified after legal professionals for Combs and prosecutors cited flaws of their solutions to questions designed to see if they are often honest and unbiased.
A number of who had been eradicated from the jury pool had seen or heard media reviews associated to the case, together with some who mentioned they noticed a video during which Combs was hitting and kicking one in every of his accusers in a Los Angeles resort hallway in 2016.
However one man who had written on a questionnaire that the video left him with the “impression of an angry hostile person who is entitled” was not dismissed from the jury pool.
After the video aired on CNN final yr, Combs apologized, saying, “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”
Choose Arun Subramanian was in search of to construct a pool of 45 potential jurors from which a panel of 12 jurors and a number of other alternates will be chosen. Nineteen had been chosen on Monday and 6 extra by midday Tuesday.
Opening statements are scheduled to be introduced on March 12 for a trial projected to last as long as two months.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not responsible to a five-count indictment charging him with main a racketeering conspiracy from 2004 to 2024 that resulted in numerous crimes, together with kidnapping, arson, bribery and intercourse trafficking.
The Dangerous Boy Data founder has been held with out bail since his arrest at a Manhattan resort final September.
