How Diddy’s likeable defence lawyer helped save his unlikeable client
Marc Agnifilo denied none of the horrific acts that the rap mogul committed and doubled down on the risky strategy by saying ‘We own the domestic violence. We own it.’
When Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lead lawyer delivered his closing argument last Friday, he faced difficult odds.
The prosecution had presented a mountain of evidence that the rap mogul committed horrible acts, including beating, dragging and choking his accusers.
Pacing back and forth and speaking off the cuff, Marc Agnifilo denied none of that.
“We own the domestic violence,” he said. “We own it.”
The defence team’s risky strategy of acknowledging Combs’ history of abuse while arguing it didn’t amount to a criminal enterprise would turn out to be a winning one.
Agnifilo, who steered a team of nine lawyers that went up against six federal prosecutors, convinced a federal jury to acquit Combs of sex-trafficking and racketeering offences and find him guilty only of two lesser prostitution counts.
“Trials always come down to a battle of storytelling,” said Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Wilkinson Stekloff who is uninvolved in the case.
“I think we saw the defence had a clear narrative that was simple to understand.”
Prosecutors charged Combs with coercing former girlfriends into participating in drug-fuelled sex parties, which he called “freak offs.” They accused him of overseeing a criminal enterprise, relying on an inner circle of body guards and employees to help carry out kidnappings, bribery and arson.
Combs’s defence team had a narrow path to victory.
The evidence of his violence was impossible to explain away. Jurors saw a shocking video of Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway as prosecutors said she tried to flee a sex party.
Ventura and other women also took the stand to detail other violent outbursts by Combs while prosecutors showed pictures of their bruised bodies.
Agnifilo’s affable affect helped him build a rapport with the jury of four women and eight men while grappling with some of his client’s stomach-turning acts.
“What makes him good is his ability to connect with the jury and to simplify complex concepts in a way that is easily digestible,” said lawyer Daniel Horwitz, who worked with Agnifilo in a construction trial that ended in acquittals for both men’s clients.
“He can combine folksiness, humour, sarcasm and seriousness in a way that is relatable for a jury.”
The defence strategy went beyond acknowledging the domestic violence. Lawyers confronted the alleged victims with text messages, trying to show they were willing participants in the freak offs.
Prosecutors might also have relied too heavily on highlighting the sensational facts in what was in reality a complex and difficult case.
“I think there is a belief that you can make the defendant so distasteful that it’s going to lead a jury to convict on something other than the facts and evidence,” said Artie McConnell, a former federal prosecutor and partner at law firm BakerHostetler.
“In my experience that rarely happens.”
When prosecutors charged Combs last year with running a criminal enterprise, he had already settled a civil lawsuit filed by Ventura for $20 million.
Combs assembled a powerful defence team, befitting his status as a music mogul who once sat atop a business empire that included selling alcohol, clothes and cologne.
Agnifilo has defended a number of high-profile clients. Among his current clients is accused UnitedHealthcare killer Luigi Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges. His wife, the defence attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, is leading that defence.
He also defended former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng in a case stemming from the 1 MDB scandal. A federal jury found Ng guilty of conspiring to launder money and bribe officials in Malaysia.
He won a rare acquittal for a Long Island town superviser charged with federal corruption offences, and represented “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli during his securities-fraud trial that led to a conviction on three charges and acquittal on five.
Agnifilo has also represented Keith Raniere, the leader of cultlike group NXIVM, who was convicted of federal sex-trafficking and racketeering charges that involved details that similarly risked alienating a jury.
Penza, the lead prosecutor in the NXIVM case, said Agnifilo focused more on accepting responsibility in the Combs case than he did at the Raniere trial – a different approach that paid dividends.
Agnifilo, 60 years old, previously worked on gang cases as a federal prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in New Jersey and as a state prosecutor at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He earned his undergraduate degree at Connecticut College and then graduated from Brooklyn Law School.
He worked for about 18 years at the firm of longtime New York criminal defence attorney Benjamin Brafman, who represented Combs against charges stemming from a 1999 nightclub shooting. Agnifilo started his own firm last year.
At the Combs trial, Agnifilo was joined by lawyers including his law partner Teny Geragos, who delivered the opening statement that set the stage for the defence’s narrative minimising the sex parties as part of Combs’ “swinger” lifestyle.
Others included Alexandra Shapiro, an experienced appellate lawyer who is currently representing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and Brian Steel, known for defending rapper Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams against racketeering charges.
Another lawyer, Nicole Westmoreland, who also played a role in that racketeering case, has spoken publicly about her own sexual assault experience.
The defence team divided up the cross examination in ways that played to each lawyer’s strength, said Effie Blassberger, a lawyer at firm Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder.
Defence attorney Anna Estevao conducted the cross examination of Ventura, Combs’s ex-girlfriend and prosecutors’ star witness.
“She managed the difficult task of respecting the emotional weight of Cassie’s testimony, while also being very strategic and precise in her questioning,” Blassberger said.
While owning Combs’ domestic violence was a successful strategy in front of the jury, it had practical consequences later Wednesday, when the presiding judge used violence as a reason to keep the music mogul in jail.
“As to the basic question of violence, you conceded it in your closing,” the judge said.
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