From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf.

This is the Daily.

On Wednesday morning, after an eight-week trial whose every turn has grabbed headlines,

a jury found Sean Combs, the music mogul known as Diddy, not guilty of the most serious

charges against him. Today, I speak with Ben Cesario about why the prosecution's case fell short

at trial, and Jody Cantor on what the verdict may tell us about how prosecutors and juries

see sexual abuse cases.

It's Thursday, July 3rd. Ben, hi. Thank you for being here. Are you outside the courthouse right now?

Yeah, I'm right around the corner from the federal courthouse downtown.

Okay. Well, we'll try not to take up too much of your time, but very happy to have you here. As we know, since we did an episode on this with you last week, Diddy has been on trial for the last two months or so facing sex trafficking and racketeering charges. These are accusations that centered on the argument that he had coerced two ex-girlfriends into repeated

sex sessions with multiple men. The jury started its deliberations on Monday, and you were at the

courthouse today when the verdict was announced. So tell me how it unfolded.

Well, it started like most mornings where there's a long

line of people to get into the courthouse. There's all the reporters, but then there's influencers

and just members of the public who have been showing up every day at this point after two months.

You know, I recognize a lot of them and we say good morning to each other and we had inside

the court building. There was a real sense of tension about this because we've all been waiting

for the verdict for two months now. But the other thing is that on Tuesday, the jury told the judge that they had reached a verdict on four of the five counts

against Sean Combs, but they were still deadlocked on the fifth one, which is the racketeering

conspiracy charge. Since they said that, I think everybody has been trying to game out in their minds

how this day might go. So what happened when things started today? It started off pretty

normal. The jury was deliberating. And then a little later in the morning, a note was delivered,

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