Sean “Puffy” Combs’ lawyer took a verbal chain saw to the prosecution case yesterday, in a dramatic closing statement that led several jurors to smile and nod their heads in apparent agreement.
“If you believe him, acquit him,” Benjamin Brafman told them of Combs, who had testified a full day on his own behalf in the six-week-old Manhattan Supreme Court trial.
The rap mogul is fighting weapons and witness-bribery charges from a Dec. 27, 1999, shoot-’em-up at the Midtown Club New York that left three clubgoers injured by gunfire.
Jurors will begin deliberating his fate today, after closing statements by the prosecutor.
In a statement lasting nearly three hours, Brafman relentlessly tarred DA witnesses – some as “criminals,” many as “liars,” one as a “despicable,” “deadbeat” dad, another as a dope-puffing layabout, and two as “pimps.”
“They want you to [believe] – on the basis of two pimps from the street, a deadbeat dad, and two people from the club who have lawsuits and conflicting testimony – testimony that has no logic, no merit and does not make sense,” Brafman bellowed.
But beyond mere name-calling, Brafman zeroed in on each DA witness’ weakest points. In one particularly brutal example, shooting victim Julius Jones got slammed for claiming on the stand that he had no idea how much he’d sued Combs for – in fact, $700 million – and only hopes to recoup $17,000 in medical bills.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Brafman said, “if you sue someone for $700 million, you know you’re lying in bed every night counting that money.”
Jurors smiled openly at the lawyer’s more mocking characterizations. “It’s almost like ‘Who Wants to Be a Billionaire,'” he said of four witnesses who have sued Combs for a total of $1 billion.
But the panel of seven blacks and five whites sat poker-faced as Brafman used the race card to beat back some of the most damaging evidence – two cops’ testimony that even as they ordered him at gunpoint to exit his Lincoln Navigator, Combs bent over in his back seat for three seconds.
But Brafman insisted Combs was simply ducking in terror from the guns of the white cops.
“Six cops, all white, have their guns pointed at you,” he said. “I can’t imagine the terror. I think you have to be an African-American to put yourself in his position.”
Combs faces up to 15 years in jail.