Music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking Wednesday but convicted of a lesser prostitution charge following a high-profile seven-week trial.
After 13 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury found Combs guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Combs, 55, smiled and appeared relieved as the verdict was read. He shook hands with one of his lawyers and thanked members of the eight-man, four-woman jury as they left the courtroom.
Judge Arun Subramanian also thanked the jury for their service before dismissing them.
"You listened, you worked together, you were here every day, rain or shine," he said. "You did so with no reward, other than the reward that comes from answering the call of public service."
The verdict concluded a trial in which prosecutors accused Combs of leading a decades-long criminal enterprise that directed employees and bodyguards to commit crimes including forced labor, drug distribution, kidnapping, bribery, witness tampering, obstruction and arson.
To convict on racketeering, jurors had to find that a criminal enterprise existed and that it committed at least two predicate offenses.
Jurors announced a partial verdict late Tuesday and said they were deadlocked on the racketeering charge, but Subramanian instructed them to continue deliberations.
Combs, once one of the music industry’s most powerful figures, had denied all charges.
Jurors began deliberations Monday after the judge gave nearly three hours of instructions on applying the evidence to the law.
The trial included disturbing testimony and thousands of pages of phone, financial and audiovisual records.
Combs was charged with sex trafficking two women: singer Casandra Ventura and another who testified under the pseudonym Jane.
Both women, who had long-term relationships with Combs, testified about abuse, threats and coercive sex in wrenching detail. They said they felt obligated to participate in Combs-directed sexual encounters with hired men.
Combs’s lawyers argued the sex was consensual. They acknowledged domestic violence occurred, including widely publicized security footage showing him beating and dragging Ventura.
Yet the defense maintained the abuse did not amount to sex trafficking.
Prosecutors in their closing argument accused Combs’s team of having "contorted the facts endlessly."
"In his mind he was untouchable," prosecutor Maurene Comey told the court. "The defendant never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them."