The Trial: A Jury of One’s Peers

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A warning.

This episode includes discussion of sexual violence and abuse, so please take care when listening.

Jury selection has now started in the trial of music mogul Sean Diddy Combs.

I walked into the Southern District of New York courthouse yesterday for the first day of jury selection.

Combs is facing federal criminal charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and sex trafficking.

He's pled not guilty and denies all allegations the timing of the start of jury selection may 5th coincides with another big new york city event the met gala it's something diddy attended many times in his old life if he had still been the old diddy yesterday he probably would have been getting dressed in something glamorous and high concept from his label sean john instead he was seated in a grand courtroom with high ceilings and rich wood wearing a dark Navy crew-neck sweater over a white button-down, no tie, with slacks.

He wasn't cuffed or shackled.

Two marshals sat behind him.

He got permission from the court to wear something other than the beige jail smock he had been wearing for prior court appearances.

His hair was a mix of salt and pepper.

leaning more towards salt.

There are no cameras or microphones allowed in the courtroom, but if you'd been there, you'd have heard the judge open the day by saying, Welcome to the U.S.

District Court for the Southern District of New York.

With the exception of voting, for most citizens, the honor and privilege of jury service is their participation in the democratic process.

This is Bad Rap, the case against Diddy.

I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an ABC News legal contributor and trial attorney.

This episode, a jury of one's peers.

Let's get to it.

So I got to court at about 7.30 a.m.

And thanks to the great producers and line waiters at ABC, I was able to do so because

the line started at 12 a.m.

that morning.

The person who was waiting in line for me that I relieved at 7.30, they were second in line.

And behind me stretched about another 30 or 40 people the vibe outside was kind of anticipatory waiting are we gonna get in it's like trying to get into your favorite nightclub and you don't know where exactly the cutoff's going to be but we're all excited to get in once you get into the southern district of new york it's first security right i go up to the 26th floor But inside the court, the way federal court operates is you have the judge all the way in the front.

You have a a large kind of wall that is about waist high with a swinging door that allows you to come in and out of it.

And in what we call the well of the court, there are three large rows of tables.

And the government walked in as a powerful group of women, because it isn't a group of women who are representing the United States of America in this case.

And they sat in the first row.

Behind them, there are so many attorneys and people representing Sean Combs that they occupy two rows of tables.

The entire left side of the courtroom is left open because that's where prospective jurors eventually come in.

When Sean Combs ultimately does come in, he hugged his attorneys and he looks back just ever so slightly and then kind of faces forward again.

No

big gestures or smiles or whatever it may be.

The goal of jury selection is to find a jury of one's peers because that's the constitutional right that we all have.

As we sat in the courtroom, about 54 or 55 people of varying demographics, whether it be race, gender, age, walked in.

And they occupied not just that section that was left empty for them, but there was an overflow that actually had to sit in the jury box as well.

And at that point, the judge began the process of jury selection, welcoming the jury into the courtroom, explaining to them why they were there, that he expected the case to go on for at least eight weeks, but trying to give people the hope that this isn't going to go as far as Independence Day.

You might still be able to get your 4th of July weekend while still being off during Memorial Day weekend, Juneteenth, and other federal holidays that are recognized.

After the judge is done giving just the preliminary statements, let's call them to the jury.

You can see they all have a sheet or multiple sheets of paper in their hand.

That's that questionnaire, the same questionnaire that we now have at ABC and can kind of walk through.

After that, welcoming, everyone, all the jurors, walk out again.

And then those jurors, or prospective jurors, move to a different room altogether, just a little down the hall, until one by one they came into the courtroom, take the witness stand, and are asked questions by the judge.

The judge, who is a self-proclaimed somewhat of a workhorse, and he is, he's really keeping this train moving.

He is a phenomenal conductor.

He created this kind of, for lack of a better term, batters box.

Because as one person is in the witness stand being asked questions by the judge, the next person who's about to come up is looking over the list of people and places.

What do I mean by that?

There are a number of people and places that are going to come up in this case that the judge wants to ask whether or not you're familiar with these people in a way that you cannot sit on this jury.

And so while one person's reviewing, the other person is on the stand.

Now, the way it works in federal court, at least at this stage, the judge is asking all the questions to see if there are what you call four-cause challenges as to whether or not this person cannot be a juror.

If they have the inability to understand English, if they have a medical condition where they can't sit and stay for that long, if they have childcare issues, things like that, right?

And after the judge asked those questions, the judge said, If I see an issue, I will excuse this juror and we'll move on to the next.

And if there are any challenges by either side, they can speak then and talk about it.

The questionnaire has 31 questions.

And one that I think is very important and also came up a number of times when asking prospective jurors what they meant in answering this question was question 10.

Have you, a family member, or someone close to you been the victim of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or domestic violence?

Now, the judge also said, if there is something that is particularly personal to you, we can have what's called a sidebar where everyone gets together away from all prying ears.

So even us in the audience couldn't hear, and you can ask those questions.

The sad part is the sheer number of women who just say yes.

And I think the saddest part for me is when they say yes, I would hope there'd be some level of shock.

But it is such a common place where women say,

yeah,

there was a neighbor.

I was flirting with him, and then he sexually assaulted me in a staircase.

Just matter of fact.

And that's something that one of the jurors actually said.

And she said, yeah, but that's just part of the culture.

It happens sometimes.

It happened in 96, so many decades ago.

But don't worry, Your Honor.

I can put that aside.

I understand

that.

My situation and what's going on here are two different situations, and I can be a fair juror.

And that's what happened to a lot of those questions.

And a judge is asking in a very polite way:

I understand that you were sexually assaulted.

I understand

that someone had done this horrible thing to you.

Can you put all that aside?

And they say, I think, I believe I can.

And they ultimately say, yes.

Now, could they end up being jurors in the trial?

Absolutely.

From those 54, 55 prospective jurors that came in, the judge is trying to whittle it down to what many people might call a magic number, where no matter what happens, 12 plus alternates will be found.

After the break, what we learn about the people who might decide Sean Combs' fate.

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As a jury selection is going on, on, Sean Combs participates in the same way as everyone else does.

And what do I mean by that?

When a juror walks into the courtroom, he stands up.

Now, he stands up partly because that is courtroom decorum.

That is a respectful way to treat the juror.

But it also gives you an opportunity to be seen by the juror, to humanize yourself to some extent, and also see the juror, to see how they react to you.

Now, when Sean Combs sat down, you can see him looking at the monitor, putting his glasses on, reading documents, attorneys leaning over to talk to him, him leaning over to talk to attorneys.

And through that,

we see his interactions and his interest of

helping to suss out who might make it to the trial.

Jury selection is like riding a train in New York.

You will see everyone from all walks of life.

We're sitting there there and we're seeing an I.T.

technician, a 30-year-old former parochial school teacher, an HBO employee, an executive at a company that deals with books, who at one point saw a memoir or at least the media report of a memoir related to people in the case.

That person?

Dismissed.

And that school teacher that I mentioned, that person remained in the jury pool despite reacting to a comedian's joke on social media about baby oil.

She said she can remain fair and impartial and still listen to the evidence that will be presented.

But think about that for a moment.

This isn't something that was on her social media account that she posted.

Because anyone can, for example, type in

Brian Buckmeyer and see what I post.

This is what did you like on social media?

What did you click on?

It's still pretty early on in the jury selection process.

So if we're trying to get that big picture, that big takeaway,

I think it's that

this is just the first step.

There are so many other steps.

We've just hit the surface level.

But I think once the defense and the government start asking their questions in the next round, that's when we really start to see

who's going to end up on this jury.

We as attorneys have this very finite way of speaking about things that is not the way that the average person talks about.

We as attorneys don't use things like, I can do it.

It's either I'm doing it or I'm not.

And so we saw that struggle from a lot of jurors in the sense of, I can do it.

I believe I can, be fair and impartial.

And so you're starting to see the attorneys kind of being like, okay, I I see who I might want to get off because you're supposed to be very sure as to whether or not you can do it.

There are some great judges in Brooklyn Criminal and Supreme Court, and they ask this question to kind of get people off that fence.

And they say,

if you got onto an airplane and the captain of the airplane said, hello, passengers, I'm your pilot for the day.

I think I can land this plane pretty safely.

Would you stay on that plane or would you get off?

And 10 out of 10 people say, I'm getting off.

Because it's not a matter of whether he can land that plane properly.

It's a matter of if he will.

And so I think right now when we're trying to look at who the potential jurors are, you're getting a lot of can, maybe, stuff like that.

It's going to be interesting to see how this jury selection continues after this.

As the rest of the week continues, we're going to start to see the defense attorneys and the government ask their questions.

And I think those are going to be far more revealing of what this case is going to look like.

Who they are looking for to be in this jury, who they will eliminate, who they will fight to eliminate, who they will allow to stay.

And then we will see who is juror number one,

two,

three,

through 12.

And that's when we're going to start to really see this case begin.

That's it for Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy.

We'll be back on Friday with more highlights of this week's journey selection.

If you appreciate this coverage, please share it and give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

It really helps others find it.

Bad Rap: The Case Against Diddy is a production of ABC Audio.

Thanks for listening.

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