Dateline: True Crime Weekly
Sean Combs: An expert witness and an explainer – how many defense lawyers is too many defense lawyers?
Thu, 22 May 2025
Dr. Dawn Hughes, who's testified as an expert in R. Kelly's sex trafficking trial and the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation proceedings, took the stand on Wednesday to lay out the psychological reasons a victim might stay in an abusive relationship. She was cross-examined by a new addition to the defense team -- this brings Combs's attorney total to nine. NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos joins Andrea and Chloe to talk about what the jury might think looking at Combs's very crowded defense table.If you want to read NBC's coverage of the trial, check out our newsletter, “Diddy On Trial”: NBCNews.com/Diddy
Chapter 1: What is the Sean Combs racketeering trial about?
This is On Trial, a special series from Dateline True Crime Weekly, bringing you daily coverage from the Sean Combs racketeering trial. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. I'm Andrea Canning, and it's Wednesday, May 21st. Just a heads up, in this episode, we're going to be talking about some graphic details and harrowing subject matter.
Today, the prosecution's big witness was not, as promised yesterday, a pop star. Kid Cudi has been rescheduled for another day. Instead, their big witness was a forensic psychologist. We'll be right back. Dr. Hughes has never met Sean Combs or Cassie Ventura, but the prosecutor hoped she'd give jurors a crash course on what she considers to be typical behavior of abuse victims.
Why they might stay in abusive relationships or send loving messages to their abusers and why they might take a while to share their experience with other people. NBC News correspondent Chloe Malas is outside the federal courthouse to tell us how Dr. Hughes did on the stand. Plus, we'll have a special guest to talk about Combs' ever-expanding defense team. Chloe, hello again. Hey, Andrea.
Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Dawn Hughes and what is her role?
Let's get right to it. Before Dr. Hughes even took the stand, this big-time witness, there was already some drama.
Absolutely, there was a defense. They had filed a motion last month to block her testimony completely. They said, first of all, she's never interviewed Cassie. She's never met Diddy. So she can only speak in generalities. They said that her testimony is, quote, advocacy masquerading as expertise.
And so one of the things that they really disagree with is the way that Dr. Hughes defines coercion, which we know is a very important part of the sex trafficking charge against Combs. The judge...
of course, let her take the stand, the expert, but he did have some conditions.
The judge had said that she could not use or define the term coercive control, that she cannot offer theories about how an abuser typically acts. And, you know, what we saw is that she gave long answers and the judge kept saying, please keep your answers direct and tight and only answer what's asked of you.
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Chapter 3: Why do victims stay in abusive relationships?
All right, so she doesn't know Sean Combs. She doesn't know Cassie Ventura. So how does Dr. Hughes help the prosecution?
So she explains why victims of domestic violence stay in these abusive relationships and why they are fearful to tell people in their lives. Most times there is love in these relationships, which makes it really complicated, and why sometimes you see these victims leave, come back again, or just stay. for longer than you expect them to.
Yeah, she used the phrase trauma bond.
Chapter 4: What arguments did the defense make against Dr. Hughes' testimony?
Yeah, that was something that she said. It's like a slot machine that the victim doesn't know what he or she will get from their partner at any given moment, but that they think their partner loves them in some way. So they want to stick around because there's that glimmer of hope.
And because abuse can be so isolating, the only person that the victim has sometimes because they don't share what's going on with anybody else is their abuser.
Dr. Hughes described a range of behavior victims adopt to cope with abuse. It could be substance abuse or disassociation. She talked about something called delayed disclosure.
Right. So she talked about why it's common to not tell people in your life, why are these individuals not filing a police report or going to the hospital? Maybe it's because you're afraid of losing financial security, a fear of not being believed. Shame. And she also talked about memory, how trauma can impact your memory.
And the defense made the point that Dr. Hughes doesn't know not only Sean or Cassie, but any of the other alleged victims. And she doesn't know anything about this case beyond what she's told.
I thought that that was a really, really good point that they were making is how can you opine on this and give credence to what the prosecutors are saying in their indictment when you have not had a front row seat to this relationship? You get that when you have your own clients in your clinical psychology practice, but you don't have that here.
So how can you talk about what may or may not have happened when you haven't talked to either of them?
Chloe, we talked at the top about all the high-profile cases that Dr. Hughes has testified in, and the defense set out to characterize her really as a professional witness.
Well, she said that she's been doing this since the late 90s and that it represents about 50% or so of her income and that she's making $6,000 to testify as part of this trial, which sounds like a lot of money, right? But she bills $600 an hour, and it sounds like that's actually pretty common. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How many defense attorneys does Sean Combs have?
That's the kind of thing the government knows is really effective at not only proving their case, but making Combs look like a horrible person. And even the defense acknowledged in their opening, you may think my client's a jerk. That doesn't mean he committed these federal crimes.
Right. One of the things I'm curious about is all these lawyers, there's so many of them. What do you think the jurors make of that?
It might look to the jury that it's not the government that has the infinite resources, but the defense. So that might be a minor issue. You don't necessarily want to look like you're as well-heeled as Combs is. And look, it's always a good thing to have more minds, more criminal defense minds on the case than less. The one thing I'll say is this. Criminal defense attorneys... often have egos.
They often have an idea about how a case should go. So the more attorneys you add, you might have a lot of disagreement behind closed doors in their strategy sessions. That can be a challenge. But a benefit is obviously that you can divide up tasks like cross-examining particular witnesses and give each attorney a set of witnesses to handle that's suited to their expertise.
So that is certainly a benefit.
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking, like, could the law of diminishing returns apply here where the jurors are sort of like, OK, now there's like too many people involved in this. What is going on? Just the optics. You know, I'm just wondering if it could be a turnoff for the average Joe sitting on that jury panel.
You're absolutely right about the optics. If there are more attorneys on the defense side than the government side, then it looks like who's really the underdog here. Because make no mistake about it, the defense is always the underdog in a federal criminal case where the conviction rate is well above 90%. But I have to say that in a federal criminal case, and I've handled quite a few of these,
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Chapter 6: What insights does Danny Cevallos provide about the defense team?
And the modern criminal case involves so much digital evidence that it just feels like you're awash in evidence and exhibits. So in my mind, even if there might be some issues with optics, with having a large defense team, it's such a luxury to be able to hand out different tasks and split everything up among a lot of these brilliant legal minds.
So I think the benefits outweigh the risks here for Combs.
And he really does have some brilliant minds on that team.
Oh, my gosh, yes. Absolutely. He's got Tenny Garagos. He's got Steele. He's got a number of really, really skilled attorneys on his team.
Is it good or bad that Combs is so engaged? We've noticed that Sean Combs has been passing a lot of Post-it notes to his attorneys recently.
I'll tell you this, and I'm gonna be really candid, it might get me in trouble, Andrea, but in my experience, it is rare that even sophisticated clients, it's rare that those notes that they hand during trial or when they start tugging on your sleeve rarely do they have something that is absolutely essential for the attorney to hear. Sometimes they do, and maybe Combs is different.
Maybe he's an essential part of the defense team. But more often than not, when you're an attorney and you're focusing on direct examination and when you should object, usually the client handing you notes is not very helpful. I think most defense attorneys would tell you that most of the time when the client passes them a note, it's some version of, they're lying. Yes.
And, you know, to that, I have to say, OK, great. What do you want me to do? I'll bring that up on cross-examination. Thank you.
And do the jurors think anything? Do you think when they're seeing the defendant so involved?
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