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At around roughly 4 a.m., many members of network media arrived to score a coveted spot outside 500 Pearl Street for the opening statements in Sean “Diddy” Combs’s sex-trafficking and racketeering trial. Fox, ABC, CBS, AP, Telemundo, and CBC were among the first networks setting up camping chairs and marking their positions in front of the Southern District of New York. Curious and passionate members of the public lined up even earlier, camping out in pop-up tents to get one of the few coveted “day of” spots inside the courtroom, including one ventriloquist, Jake Louie and his smartly dressed dummy, Louie. Jake, who calls himself a comedian on Instagram, arrived early in the morning to get a seat inside with Louie.
It wasn’t until around 8:20 a.m. that Combs’s family and members of his defense team arrived. His mother, Janice, dressed all in black, walked in first, blocked from the media by a woman holding up a black binder and two men who walked by her side. She was followed by the rest of Combs’s family: his son Justin Combs wore a black sweater over a white Oxford button-up, while Combs’s oldest, Quincy Brown, 33, was also dressed in all black. His 18-year-old twin daughters, L’Lila and Jessie Combs, and his eldest daughter, Chance Combs, 19, walked in behind them to show support for their father. Photographers jostled on ladders and stools for a shot, pushing into each other as the family made their way into the courthouse.
The most interesting sight outside of Diddy’s trial on May 12. Photo: Mike Segar/REUTERS
The frenzy subsided once Combs’s family passed through security into the courthouse. Camera crews opened up beach umbrellas to block them from the sun in preparation for a long day outside of waiting. They took up the park benches across the street making calls, doing live on-camera stand-ups, rewatching the footage they had shot, and chatting with each other. Overall, the morning felt very business as usual, despite the high-profile nature of the case. Inside the courthouse, things were tense. Except for accredited members of the media, cell phones and computers were not permitted in the federal courtroom. Combs, who has been locked up for the past eight months in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, looked considerably older with his graying hair, arriving to sit face-to-face with the jury deciding his fate against the federal charges that he led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice, among other crimes.
Combs did have one very vocal fan outside voicing his support, who yelled “Sean ‘Diddy” Combs is not guilty” at various intervals throughout the day. Even with a calmer crowd, the case has attracted attention internationally with reporters from Canada, Germany, China, the Netherlands, and beyond traveling to cover the trial, not to mention the bloggers from across the country.
“This news has become viral in China,” said Lynn Zhang, a reporter for Shanghai Media Group. “He’s a very famous rapper. He has a lot of fans. It also brings up the difference between Chinese and American law. We don’t have a jury system the way you do here.”
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Jericka Duncan — an on-air correspondent for CBS who has covered Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s cases — called the Combs case the “trial of the year.”
“It interests people because of who he is and who he represents, unlike some of the other people I mentioned who are of a certain age, Sean Combs feels relatively young compared to Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein,” Duncan said. “He’s got seven children, he’s 55 years old, and a lot of people from this generation know him, the younger generation, and even the older generation. He’s always found a way to stay in the lane or, you know, with the youth.”
Duncan said it was the story of someone who at one point was the epitome of success and now has to ask permission to get a glass of water that has drawn everyone in.
“I think we love a success story of people going from nothing to something, but we are also interested — I don’t want to say obsessed … We are just as fascinated by when the downfall happens,” Duncan said. “This is someone who you know from music, his apparel line, his liquor brand, Revolt TV, it just seemed like he was unstoppable.”
Duncan also noted the growing appetite for court dramas, as seen in the aired trials for Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski incident out of Utah, Alec Baldwin’s Rust manslaughter trial in New Mexico, and most famously Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s battle in Virginia, aired for all to see.
“People love courts. They love a good court-TV type of story, and this has all of the elements and all of the makings of … something that people will be interested in hearing more about throughout the world,” Duncan said.
Les Trent, on-air senior correspondent for Inside Edition, said with federal court not allowing cameras in the courtroom, the only visuals have been “family members coming and going and the attorneys, who probably will not speak.” That means a lot of waiting. And a fairly boring circus outside. However, Trent does expect crowds and coverage to get ramped up after the lengthy trial when a verdict is announced.
Mike Segar, one of two photographers for Reuters on assignment for the start of the trial, said he was not surprised with the lack of supporters.
“I expected it to be kind of like it is — a large media content, and people waiting in line to be in the courtroom, but I did not expect a large crowd of support,” Segar said.
Timothy A. Clary, a staff photographer for Agence France-Presse, agreed, saying the turnout for Combs didn’t compare to Bernie Madoff’s final sentencing day. In contrast, Clary said he expects to see a much bigger turnout when Luigi Mangione goes on trial. “That is going to be big,” Clary said. By lunch, though, $32-an-hour line-sitters were already arriving for Tuesday’s drama, which will likely include anticipated testimony from Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura. No word if Louie will also be in attendance.
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