Lawyers for Diddy have claimed his sex trafficking case may have to be dismissed due to ‘prosecutorial errors’ during a recent raid of the rap mogul’s prison cell.
Attorney Marc Agnifilo accused prosecutors of a ‘complete institutional failure’ that they say could have potentially jeopardized the case, during an emergency court hearing in New York on Tuesday.
The defense team claimed the rapper’s constitutional rights were violated last month when federal investigators seized 19 pages of his notes during a sweep of his cell and shared them with prosecutors.
Agnifilo claimed the material contained Diddy’s handwritten privileged notes to his legal team concerning defense strategies for his upcoming trial.
The court heard feds also seized Diddy’s ‘Things to Do’ list, which included telling a family member to ‘find dirt’ on two alleged victims, as well as pages in which he wrote ‘inspirational’ quotes for himself.
Agnifilo called the pre-planned sweep a ‘pretext’ for a prison investigator to target Diddy – real name Sean Combs.
The potential remedy could include the ‘dismissal of the indictment’, he said, or the recusal of the prosecution team.
‘We don’t know enough to say which is the reasonable remedy’, he told the court.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, pictured in a September court sketch, was present during an emergency court hearing in his sex trafficking case on Tuesday
Lawyers for the music mogul claim prosecutors have potentially jeopardized the case after seizing privileged material from his jail cell last month
Judge Arun Subramanian ordered that the prosecution delete all of its copies of the papers for the time being.
The emergency hearing came after the defense filed new court documents revealing they only learned prosecutors were in possession of the privileged material from the October 28 raid on Friday.
Diddy has been languishing in jail as he awaits trial for racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
He was arrested on September 17 and is expected to go on trial next May. He has denied all charges.
Agnifilo told the court that defense lawyers are now looking into the incident to determine how serious the matter is.
He also said the court needed to review the surveillance footage from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Diddy is being held, to work out what happened during the search.
Judge Subramanian ordered the Bureau of Prisons to preserve the footage.
Diddy, 55, was not shackled during his court appearance Tuesday, the first time he has been given such freedoms, after a judge approved a request from his lawyers to remove them.
The disgraced rap mogul remains incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after being repeatedly denied bail
He appeared relaxed and was smiling as he walked in through a side door, cracking jokes with his lawyers and hugging them.
Diddy appeared to enjoy working the room, craning his neck backwards to see who was in the public gallery and pointing towards a court sketch artist.
In a dramatic moment, Agnifilo held up the files in question and handed one to the judge to review.
Among the material which prosecutors had access to was notes Diddy took down after one of his lawyers suggested a potential expert witness, a retired doctor.
Agnifilo said: ‘I cannot think of anything more in the heartland of attorney client privilege’.
Prosecutor Mary Slavik told the court that they had acted in a ‘completely appropriate’ fashion with regards to the documents.
She said that the documents were given to a ‘Filter Team’ – a separate group of prosecutors – who reviewed them to see if they were privileged.
Slavik said the notes in question included Diddy’s ‘Things to do’ list, mentions about family members and financial matters and ‘inspirational quotes’.
The rapper has been accused of arranging ‘Freak Offs,’ described as ‘elaborate and produced sex performances’ arranged and directed by Combs
Prosecutors claim that he tried to influence potential jurors in his trial by getting his seven children to post a video marking his birthday on November 4th
One note talked about how he wanted to ‘find dirt’ on two different victims and Diddy wrote to a family member about ‘finding everything’ on one specific victim, the court was told.
Judge Subramanian said that the issue with the notes was not their labeling but the ‘context in which they were taken’.
He said that the court would resolve the legal privilege matter at a later date and that the next court appearance, Diddy’s bail hearing, would go ahead on Friday.
Earlier on Tuesday lawyers for Diddy requested he be allowed to appear unshackled for the all future court appearances.
The request was filed by Agnifilo ahead of the court appearance.
It comes after court documents filed on Friday revealed Diddy has been accused of obstructing the prosecution’s case from behind bars by paying off witnesses and enlisting his own children in a ‘public relations campaign’.
Prosecutors say the disgraced hip hop mogul has ‘demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding’ even though he is locked up.
They claim that he tried to influence potential jurors in his trial by getting his seven children to post a video marking his birthday on November 4.
Diddy allegedly paid off one witness after calling and texting her a staggering 128 times over four days from his jail cell to persuade her to support him.
Prosecutors also claimed he used other inmates’ phone accounts to make calls to people he is not allowed to speak with and to ‘avoid law enforcement monitoring’.
Dozens of people, some of whom were minors at the time, have sued Diddy in civil courts for a string of offenses, which he also denies.