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Brian Buckmire (0:26)
3 today@Polestar.com At 9:52am Wednesday morning, the jury sent word they'd reached a unanimous verdict in USA V' Sean Combs. The day we've been building toward for the last seven weeks is here. It took the jury about 14 hours of deliberations before they found Sean Diddy Combs guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. But he was not convicted of of the more serious charges he was facing. The jury found him not guilty of RICO or racketeering conspiracy. Same for two counts of sex trafficking, one for Cassie and one for the alleged victim that testified under the pseudonym Jane. After the split verdict, Combs kneeled on the floor, appearing to pray. Once he got up and looked towards the gallery, a loud cheer and round of applause broke out. And as he left the courtroom, he said to his family, I love you. I'mma be home soon. Because Combs was acquitted of the more serious charges, his attorney asked for him to be immediately released on bail pending sentencing. The defense offered a million dollar bond, but the prosecution objected, saying the government plans to pursue significant incarceration for Combs. He still faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison for the two transportation to engage in prostitution charges. Cassie Ventura, the prosecution's star witness, had also urged the judge to keep Diddy locked up. Her lawyer sent a letter to the judge that said she believes Combs is, quote, likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including her. It took until the end of the day, but the judge eventually decided Combs should stay in jail awaiting sentencing. This is bad rap. The Case Against Diddy Brian I'm Brian Buckmire, an ABC News legal contributor and practicing attorney. This episode Split Verdict I want to share some of my early thoughts and reactions to this news because as I sat there listening and waiting for the verdict, I heard not guilty as to the racketeering conspiracy. And I thought to myself, okay, a lot of predicate acts, they just needed two Maybe this was a situation where they didn't believe that there was a criminal enterprise, that functional part of this charge, that center of the racketeering conspiracy. And if there's no enterprise, there's no rico. And then they went to the next count, Count two, not guilty. And I knew that was sex trafficking for Cassie. And that's the one that really shocked me because of all of the violence, of all we saw from the photos of the injuries to the intercontinental video. I thought if there was ever an alleged victim who would get this charge, either because of the facts of the case or just the brutality that they saw, it'd be Cassie. And I knew in my mind, if they did not find Sean Combs guilty of sex trafficking, Cassie, that there would be no way that they would find him guilty of trafficking Jane. And so from there, I was not surprised. I knew he'd be found guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution, because he could be found guilty of those two charges for transporting either Cassie or Jane or any of the 27 sex workers who say they went across state lines. And we saw all of the receipts for the hotels and the planes and the text messages. There was no argument for that. I mean, they tried to make an argument, but there was no actual legal argument for that. And so now when I heard that, my first thought was, Mark Agnifolo is going to ask for him to be released pending sentencing. They're going to try to make it that these charges are not run consecutively, but instead concurrently. And if they can get a sentence that is sub five years, that's a win. As a defense attorney, when your client is looking at life and you got them five years where they've already served almost a single year. As you've heard me say before on this podcast, I think that the age of the jury could have been more important, not necessarily gender or race, because when you're having the conversation about consent, we as a society are still grappling with what that is. And I think there are varying degrees of understanding and belief as to what consent is based on the age of an individual. Someone who is 65 has a different opinion of someone who is 40, who has a different opinion of someone who's 20. But all three of those people confine themselves on a jury. And when you have a jury that over half of them is 51 years or older, I think that has a big part to play in a case like this. If there's anything to gleam from the decision of the jury, it would be this. Either one, there is no criminal enterprise or two 12 people could not unanimously decide on at least two predicate acts. When it comes to both Cassie and Jane, there had to have been a belief that at some point and in some way this was consensual, that Sean Combs might have been a brutal and violent boyfriend. He might have abused women in a way that no person or no woman should ever be subjected to. That he is in many ways an indefensible human being as it applies to how he treats others. But one thing he is not is a trafficker. And the jury must have been laser focused on that concept, that belief and the elements of the crimes of trafficking as it applied to both Cassie and Jane. To come back with this verdict coming up, what you need to know about the sentencing.