UPDATE (July 2, 2025, 10:32 a.m. ET): On Wednesday a jury found Sean Combs guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, and acquitted him on one count of racketeering and two counts of sex trafficking.
As the jury deliberates in the trial of rapper and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who has been sitting trial after being charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation in aid of prostitution, there is a strong likelihood he will be convicted on all counts, as the government has likely introduced enough evidence of the essential elements of these three crimes (two of the five are duplicates) to at least support convictions. Of course, the jurors are empowered to conclude that the evidence is not credible and acquit. But the government has at least put in enough evidence that, if believed, would satisfy each of the essential elements of the crimes charged.
Are these crimes a good “fit,” legally speaking, for what Combs is alleged to have done?
But this is also probably not a case that the Southern District of New York should have brought. To be clear, everything we’ve seen indicates Combs certainly should be held accountable and face the consequences for behavior that has by all accounts been deeply destructive, harmful and dangerous.
Still, even if Combs is found guilty, he shouldn’t have been charged with these crimes or in this court. That’s because Congress enacted each of these statutes to combat specific evils, few of which today accurately apply to the crimes Combs has been charged with.
The main question is, therefore, are these crimes a good “fit,” legally speaking, for what Combs is alleged to have done?
First, there’s the racketeering conspiracy charge.
In the 1950s and 60s, Congress was concerned about the criminal infiltration of labor unions, along with the Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations’ exposure of the “family” structure of La Cosa Nostra — or, the mafia. The legislative history of RICO implies that its proponents wanted to limit the law’s reach to “traditional organized crime.” The congressional statement of “Findings and Purpose” accompanying the law indicates that Congress was concerned about such things as “organized crime annually drain[ing] billions of dollars from America’s economy… [and]…this money and power are increasingly used to infiltrate and corrupt legitimate business and labor unions and to subvert and corrupt our democratic processes…” Did Congress intend for the RICO conspiracy statute to criminalize an allegedly violent, philandering, megalomaniac boss who is accused of using his company and associates to help him abuse his girlfriends and throw sex parties? Probably not. But, since RICO was so broadly drafted — and intentionally so, conduct likely fits within its reach.
The effect feels like the government is forcing a square, morally compromised peg into a round hole.
Then there’s sex trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, “equipped the U.S. Government with new tools and resources…to eliminate modern forms of slavery domestically and internationally.” In Senate hearings on international trafficking of children and women in 2000, Sen. Sam Brownback insisted that sex trafficking “is the new slavery. It includes all the elements associated with slavery, including being abducted from your family and home, taken to a strange country where you do not speak the language, losing your identity and freedom, being forced to work against your will with no pay, being beaten and raped, having no defense against the one who rules you, and eventually dying early because of this criminal misuse.” In order to pass the TVPA, “lawmakers repeatedly referred to trafficking victims as meek, passive objects of sexual exploitation…exercising no free will during their illegal entry into the United States and as passive during their subsequent sexual exploitation,” according to a 2007 article in the Boston University Law Journal by Stanford law professor Jayashri Srikantiah.
Do the allegations in the Combs case feel like what Congress was thinking of when the TVPA was passed? There is evidence of violence against Cassie Ventura and the woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” but the prosecution risks oversimplifying a complex narrative to classify these women, as well as male escorts, as “exercising no free will” or to reduce them to “meek, passive objects of sexual exploitation.” Was Combs’ conduct “slavery”? Based on the testimonies and evidence we’ve seen during this trial, I think maybe not.
Of the three different statutes with which Combs is charged, his alleged conduct most neatly fits into the Mann Act, which has the most dubious history of the three.
Then there’s the charge for transportation for prostitution, also called the Mann Act. It’s also known as the “White Slave Act.” That’s because “[m]uch of the zeal of the Mann Act arose out of growing concern with prostitution among white women; this was accompanied by a sense that white women, as opposed to women of color, would never willingly engage in acts of prostitution, and therefore must be ‘enslaved’ innocent victims,” according to a Fordham Law Review paper. It originally prohibited transportation for “debauchery” or any “immoral purpose” whether or not money changed hands for the sex. But in 1986, Congress amended the statute to be gender-neutral and the “immoral purposes” clause was removed, so that now it criminalizes transportation for prostitution or other illegal sex.
Of the three different statutes with which Combs is charged, his alleged conduct most neatly fits into the Mann Act, which has the most dubious history of the three as well. This is also the crime that Combs is most likely to be convicted of: it really only requires 1) intention 2) interstate transportation for 3) prostitution. It doesn’t require force, coercion, arson, domestic violence or organized criminal conduct.
Here’s the thing: These statutes don’t have to be used only against the specific crimes that Congress envisioned when they were passed in decades or centuries past. The RICO act is not limited to the mafia. Sex trafficking is not limited to situations where young girls are kidnapped from developing countries. The statutes are limited only by their explicit language. And, if conduct meets the statutory definition, then that conduct fits within the prohibited conduct.
Even if it’s highly likely that Combs is convicted on all counts, it’s possibly still a prosecution that really shouldn’t have been brought.
