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On 5 May 2025, the criminal trial against Sean Combs (United States v COMBS, 1:24-cr-00542, (SDNY)) opened in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. The counts filed included: Count One – Racketeering Conspiracy, Count Two – Sex Trafficking by Force, Fraud, or Coercion and Count Three – Transportation to Engage in Prostitution. The complexity of the case resulted in the prosecution dropping Count One – which focused on the use of a global business empire to conduct illegal activities facilitating the abuse and coercion of women and others – to concentrate on the sex trafficking charges. On 2 July, the jury acquitted Combs of Count Two and convicted him on two charges under Count Three in relation to Cassie Ventura and the anonymised ‘Jane’.
While the prosecution presented evidence of Combs’s coercion adduced by Ventura – the government’s main prosecution witness – the jury was not persuaded, either because they believed Ventura was a willing participant in Combs’s so-called ‘freak-offs’ or, if they accepted she was coerced, then the coercion did not meet the standard set under 18 USC § 1591 (2023) Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion which requires ‘force, threats of force, fraud, coercion or any combination of such means’, defining ‘coercion’ as ‘threats of serious harm to/or physical restraint against a person’.
The CCTV footage that became public on 17 May 2024, showing Ventura being grabbed by the neck, dragged and kicked in the hallway of an InterContinental Hotel on 5 March 2016, left no doubt as to Combs’s ability to use physical violence which created in Ventura a fear for her physical and sexual safety. Ventura did not file criminal charges of assault which would have been open to her, settling instead in a civil suit on 16 November 2023 for $20 million. (It has been reported that there are at least 80 civil suits pending or ongoing against Combs.) The CCTV footage presented a different picture from the public-facing Combs and his lucrative empire. His Sean John fragrance ‘Unforgivable’ is still widely available, marketed with the blurb: ‘Cologne Sean John defines modern masculine identity’; the ‘perfect fragrance for passion strength and confidence’. Somewhat ironic, post-conviction.
In building its case, the prosecution focused on Combs’s use of force and coercive control of Ventura. She provided compelling testimony of a woman trying to appease and placate, complying to ensure that the recordings Combs had made of her – during what he called ‘freak-offs’ and she regarded as forced and coerced ‘sex’ with male commercial sex workers – were not made public. Ventura’s entrapment, degradation and humiliation ensured her silence.
Combs’s defence team turned this apparent assent into evidence of her complicity and consent relying on the text messages they exchanged before the ‘sex sessions’ Combs devised. In a performative reconstruction his team linguistically referenced this conduct as a ‘swingers’ lifestyle’ and, Janus-faced, reduced it to a ‘bit of a different sex life’ while acknowledging that Combs was ‘violent with romantic partners’ and is ‘a very flawed individual’. Other witnesses under immunity were called to describe what they knew and saw, including Combs’s physical violence towards Ventura, his rage and drugtaking. Ventura was psychologically, economically, emotionally and publicly bonded to, and dependent on, Combs, later saying of the ‘sessions’ that her ‘stomach churned’ and that she was ‘confused, nervous, but also loved him very much’ (Sky News, 2025).
Representations of women as complicit in violence and sexual violence/rape against them also characterised defence submissions in the trial of Grime music artist, Andy Anokye. The lyrics to Anokye’s ‘Feed Em to the Lions’ is an example of his output. In 2020, at Bristol Crown Court, Anokye was convicted of 21 counts of rape (s 1(1) Sexual Offences Act 2023), false imprisonment, assault by penetration and assault in relation to four victims, whom he waterboarded, threatened with firearms and told one she would be shot. These, he said, were ‘rape games’, part of ‘the sex I have’ and that his victims were ‘willing and enthusiastic in my sex games/role play’. Defending counsel said this was ‘consensual sexual activity operating on a level playing field’ and that his victims were ‘independent, adult women’.
To assist the Combs jury, the prosecution instructed the expert witness Dawn Hughes PhD, the clinical and forensic psychologist also instructed by the prosecution in the R Kelly sex trafficking case, the Weinstein rape and sexual assault case, and in the Heard-Depp defamation case. Hughes was to give opinion evidence on coercive control, its dynamics and impact, and to dispel myths and stereotypes about abused women. The defence, however, filed an application in limine to preclude Hughes’ opinion, arguing that it would not help the jury understand the evidence as required by Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (amended in 2023 – see Lasker and Leader, 2024), would address topics within the jury’s everyday knowledge, mislead the jury on the law, usurp the role of the trial judge and improperly bolster the prosecution case by mirroring the testimony of the victim (Rule 403). Hughes was permitted to testify as a ‘blind expert’, having not evaluated any specific victim or evidence in the case, offering broad evidence general opinion.
In England and Wales, as in the US, expert opinion on intimate partner abuse (IPA) and its impacts on mens rea and criminal responsibility is called to support the defence and prosecution in a wide range of cases including self-defence, voluntary manslaughter, duress and trafficking pleadings. Since 2005, I have been instructed as an IPA expert witness in cases including a matrimonial financial resolution matter, several cases where the abused partner recanted allegations and was charged with perverting the course of justice (including R v A [2012] EWCA Crim 434, the crime of retracting a truthful statement!), a criminal injuries compensation appeal (RT v The First Tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [2016] UKUT 306 (AAC), paras 30,31), cases where a defence of duress or compulsion was raised (R v Kanyemera (Jemimah) [2012] EWCA Crim 2721, R v Rahman [2024] EWCA Crim 1719) and in a case of self-defence. However, the IPA expert is still only occasionally instructed by either side.
Sally Challen’s murder conviction appeal (R v Challen [2019] EWCA Crim 916) raised coercive control as integral to understanding the context and her psychological response which resulted in the killing of an abusive husband and relied on expert opinion from Professor Evan Stark, a sociologist and forensic social worker, on IPA as well as evidence from two psychiatrists. On appeal, a retrial was ordered but not pursued, Challen subsequently accepting a prosecution agreement to manslaughter/diminished responsibility.
The rules of evidence determine who is an expert and the nature of admissible expert evidence. While psychiatry with its pseudoscientific status meets the admissibility threshold, its focus on ‘disturbed minds’ is an ill-match here. Little surprise that in the US, domestic abuse specialist Lenore Walker PhD, in her efforts to introduce the impacts of domestic abuse into the courtroom, devised the over-therapeutised ‘battered woman syndrome’ to meet scientific admissibility standards. However, IPA impact is not always a forensic issue and participation in crime and self-defensive conduct is more often a response to an external threatening situation rather than a product of a personal disorder. A psychiatric assessment is rarely appropriate. Nor is domestic abuse and its impact ‘common sense/knowledge’, although challenges to expert opinion pretrial regularly invoke R v Turner [1975] QB 834. The defence’s application in Combs in contesting the need for expert testimony had a point (see p 12): ‘Any prosecutor worth her salt would be arguing about power differentials and the targeting of specific vulnerabilities, and she would not need an expert to provide a basis for that argument.’ However, dispensing with an expert requires a better understanding of abuse and its impact and calls for a programme of training of prosecutors, solicitors, judges and counsel.
Meanwhile, the Law Commission is currently calling for evidence in its review of the law of homicide. What is needed here is a review of self-defence and of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s 55(3) with its high hurdle of ‘fear of serious violence’ as a trigger for loss of self-control – originally introduced to meet the difficulties ‘battered women’ had with accessing the old provocation standard. ‘Fear of serious violence’ is now out of kilter with contemporary understanding of fear and coercive control.
Other changes include the drafting of specimen directions for judges on myths and stereotypes about domestic abuse across a range of offences, and rewriting the self-defence direction to jurors in the Crown Court Compendium which includes in six of eight examples an ill-placed paragraph directing jurors to use their ‘common sense’ (shades of Rumpole’s Mr Justice Oliver Oliphant).
On the development and expansion of the construction of the seminal principles of ‘reasonableness’, ‘imminency’ and ‘proportionality’, England and Wales has yet to follow State v Wanrow (1977) 88 Wash. 2d 221, 559 P. 2d 548, where Wanrow successfully challenged her murder conviction on the grounds of a woman’s right to self-defence where the Washington Supreme Court recognised her inability and her inherent disproportionality to ‘effectively repel a male assailant without resorting to the use of deadly weapons’ – arguments advanced by the phenomenal advocacy of her lawyer’s co-counsel Elizabeth Schneider (the expert witness testimony having been excluded at trial).
Such progressive understanding was echoed by Madame Justice L›Heureux-Dubé in R v Lavallee [1990] (SSC) 1 SCR 852 in the Supreme Court of Canada which, contrary to the lower court, ruled expert testimony admissible and held that expert evidence can assist the jury in dispelling myths about battered women. The expert drew on the findings of Walker and other experts in the field (at 878-891).
In England and Wales in R v Hasan [2005] UKHL 31 – a case where a duress defence was mounted and unavailable because of Hasan’s voluntary gang association – Baroness Hale seized the opportunity to critique the masculinism of the duress doctrine and inequity in life and in law particularly where women face male body force in intimate partner relations.
It should be more broadly recognised that in survival mode and in the moment of perceived danger women who act in self-defence act reasonably in striking their aggressor with a weapon because of their lesser size and strength.
The Sentencing Code (Sch 21, para 4.2) sets a 25-year starting point for murder committed with knives/weapons, and in manslaughter weapons are an aggravating factor, penal policy holding gangs not defenceless abused women in their contemplation. The Wade Review on Domestic Homicide Sentencing (2023) proposed a disapplication for victims of intimate partner violence. This was rejected by the government but will be considered as part of the Law Commission’s homicide review including defences to murder for victims of abuse who kill abusers.
While we continue to wait for reform to the law in this area, an IPA expert can be of vital assistance to the court. They can speak to the background of abuse and a victim’s heightened specialist knowledge of an intimate partner’s propensity for violence and coercion, which impacts on the victim’s assessment of the necessity for, and timing of, a self-defensive response. We have come some way from Devlin J who rejected this as irrelevant in the seminal provocation case of R v Duffy [1949] 2 All ER 932 (the defendant killed her violent abusive husband) – but not far enough.
As for Combs, who has remained in custody since 16 September 2024, he awaits sentencing on 3 October 2025, the judge having denied his lawyers’ request for an acquital or re-trial. Similar cases indicate Combs can expect at least five years and supervised release for life (see United States v Biancofiori (2024)). S Y v Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc (2021) is also interesting where a trafficked victim sued the hotel in which the offence(s) occurred. Further litigation involving Combs can be expected.
As for coercive control in intimate partner violence and abuse, until changes are instituted the expert witness remains vital to realigning the tilted scales of law and justice in such cases.
Sky News, 2025: Gemma Peplow, ‘Diddy trial: What we learned from Cassie’s testimony’, Sky News, 16 May 2025
USA v Combs, Defence application in limine to preclude expert witness opinion, 2 April 2025
Eric Lasker and Joshua Leader, ‘New Federal Rule of Evidence Rule 702’, Defense Counsel Journal, Summer 2024
The Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review undertaken by independent reviewer Clare Wade KC and the government response
United States v Biancofiori (2024) United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. February 28, 2024 94 F.4th 651 2024 WL 830305 21-3372
SY v Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (2021) United States District Court, M.D. Florida, Fort Myers Division. February 16, 2021 519 F.Supp.3d 1069 2021 WL 597697 2:20-CV-626-FTM-29MRM
On 5 May 2025, the criminal trial against Sean Combs (United States v COMBS, 1:24-cr-00542, (SDNY)) opened in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. The counts filed included: Count One – Racketeering Conspiracy, Count Two – Sex Trafficking by Force, Fraud, or Coercion and Count Three – Transportation to Engage in Prostitution. The complexity of the case resulted in the prosecution dropping Count One – which focused on the use of a global business empire to conduct illegal activities facilitating the abuse and coercion of women and others – to concentrate on the sex trafficking charges. On 2 July, the jury acquitted Combs of Count Two and convicted him on two charges under Count Three in relation to Cassie Ventura and the anonymised ‘Jane’.
While the prosecution presented evidence of Combs’s coercion adduced by Ventura – the government’s main prosecution witness – the jury was not persuaded, either because they believed Ventura was a willing participant in Combs’s so-called ‘freak-offs’ or, if they accepted she was coerced, then the coercion did not meet the standard set under 18 USC § 1591 (2023) Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion which requires ‘force, threats of force, fraud, coercion or any combination of such means’, defining ‘coercion’ as ‘threats of serious harm to/or physical restraint against a person’.
The CCTV footage that became public on 17 May 2024, showing Ventura being grabbed by the neck, dragged and kicked in the hallway of an InterContinental Hotel on 5 March 2016, left no doubt as to Combs’s ability to use physical violence which created in Ventura a fear for her physical and sexual safety. Ventura did not file criminal charges of assault which would have been open to her, settling instead in a civil suit on 16 November 2023 for $20 million. (It has been reported that there are at least 80 civil suits pending or ongoing against Combs.) The CCTV footage presented a different picture from the public-facing Combs and his lucrative empire. His Sean John fragrance ‘Unforgivable’ is still widely available, marketed with the blurb: ‘Cologne Sean John defines modern masculine identity’; the ‘perfect fragrance for passion strength and confidence’. Somewhat ironic, post-conviction.
In building its case, the prosecution focused on Combs’s use of force and coercive control of Ventura. She provided compelling testimony of a woman trying to appease and placate, complying to ensure that the recordings Combs had made of her – during what he called ‘freak-offs’ and she regarded as forced and coerced ‘sex’ with male commercial sex workers – were not made public. Ventura’s entrapment, degradation and humiliation ensured her silence.
Combs’s defence team turned this apparent assent into evidence of her complicity and consent relying on the text messages they exchanged before the ‘sex sessions’ Combs devised. In a performative reconstruction his team linguistically referenced this conduct as a ‘swingers’ lifestyle’ and, Janus-faced, reduced it to a ‘bit of a different sex life’ while acknowledging that Combs was ‘violent with romantic partners’ and is ‘a very flawed individual’. Other witnesses under immunity were called to describe what they knew and saw, including Combs’s physical violence towards Ventura, his rage and drugtaking. Ventura was psychologically, economically, emotionally and publicly bonded to, and dependent on, Combs, later saying of the ‘sessions’ that her ‘stomach churned’ and that she was ‘confused, nervous, but also loved him very much’ (Sky News, 2025).
Representations of women as complicit in violence and sexual violence/rape against them also characterised defence submissions in the trial of Grime music artist, Andy Anokye. The lyrics to Anokye’s ‘Feed Em to the Lions’ is an example of his output. In 2020, at Bristol Crown Court, Anokye was convicted of 21 counts of rape (s 1(1) Sexual Offences Act 2023), false imprisonment, assault by penetration and assault in relation to four victims, whom he waterboarded, threatened with firearms and told one she would be shot. These, he said, were ‘rape games’, part of ‘the sex I have’ and that his victims were ‘willing and enthusiastic in my sex games/role play’. Defending counsel said this was ‘consensual sexual activity operating on a level playing field’ and that his victims were ‘independent, adult women’.
To assist the Combs jury, the prosecution instructed the expert witness Dawn Hughes PhD, the clinical and forensic psychologist also instructed by the prosecution in the R Kelly sex trafficking case, the Weinstein rape and sexual assault case, and in the Heard-Depp defamation case. Hughes was to give opinion evidence on coercive control, its dynamics and impact, and to dispel myths and stereotypes about abused women. The defence, however, filed an application in limine to preclude Hughes’ opinion, arguing that it would not help the jury understand the evidence as required by Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (amended in 2023 – see Lasker and Leader, 2024), would address topics within the jury’s everyday knowledge, mislead the jury on the law, usurp the role of the trial judge and improperly bolster the prosecution case by mirroring the testimony of the victim (Rule 403). Hughes was permitted to testify as a ‘blind expert’, having not evaluated any specific victim or evidence in the case, offering broad evidence general opinion.
In England and Wales, as in the US, expert opinion on intimate partner abuse (IPA) and its impacts on mens rea and criminal responsibility is called to support the defence and prosecution in a wide range of cases including self-defence, voluntary manslaughter, duress and trafficking pleadings. Since 2005, I have been instructed as an IPA expert witness in cases including a matrimonial financial resolution matter, several cases where the abused partner recanted allegations and was charged with perverting the course of justice (including R v A [2012] EWCA Crim 434, the crime of retracting a truthful statement!), a criminal injuries compensation appeal (RT v The First Tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber) and Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [2016] UKUT 306 (AAC), paras 30,31), cases where a defence of duress or compulsion was raised (R v Kanyemera (Jemimah) [2012] EWCA Crim 2721, R v Rahman [2024] EWCA Crim 1719) and in a case of self-defence. However, the IPA expert is still only occasionally instructed by either side.
Sally Challen’s murder conviction appeal (R v Challen [2019] EWCA Crim 916) raised coercive control as integral to understanding the context and her psychological response which resulted in the killing of an abusive husband and relied on expert opinion from Professor Evan Stark, a sociologist and forensic social worker, on IPA as well as evidence from two psychiatrists. On appeal, a retrial was ordered but not pursued, Challen subsequently accepting a prosecution agreement to manslaughter/diminished responsibility.
The rules of evidence determine who is an expert and the nature of admissible expert evidence. While psychiatry with its pseudoscientific status meets the admissibility threshold, its focus on ‘disturbed minds’ is an ill-match here. Little surprise that in the US, domestic abuse specialist Lenore Walker PhD, in her efforts to introduce the impacts of domestic abuse into the courtroom, devised the over-therapeutised ‘battered woman syndrome’ to meet scientific admissibility standards. However, IPA impact is not always a forensic issue and participation in crime and self-defensive conduct is more often a response to an external threatening situation rather than a product of a personal disorder. A psychiatric assessment is rarely appropriate. Nor is domestic abuse and its impact ‘common sense/knowledge’, although challenges to expert opinion pretrial regularly invoke R v Turner [1975] QB 834. The defence’s application in Combs in contesting the need for expert testimony had a point (see p 12): ‘Any prosecutor worth her salt would be arguing about power differentials and the targeting of specific vulnerabilities, and she would not need an expert to provide a basis for that argument.’ However, dispensing with an expert requires a better understanding of abuse and its impact and calls for a programme of training of prosecutors, solicitors, judges and counsel.
Meanwhile, the Law Commission is currently calling for evidence in its review of the law of homicide. What is needed here is a review of self-defence and of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s 55(3) with its high hurdle of ‘fear of serious violence’ as a trigger for loss of self-control – originally introduced to meet the difficulties ‘battered women’ had with accessing the old provocation standard. ‘Fear of serious violence’ is now out of kilter with contemporary understanding of fear and coercive control.
Other changes include the drafting of specimen directions for judges on myths and stereotypes about domestic abuse across a range of offences, and rewriting the self-defence direction to jurors in the Crown Court Compendium which includes in six of eight examples an ill-placed paragraph directing jurors to use their ‘common sense’ (shades of Rumpole’s Mr Justice Oliver Oliphant).
On the development and expansion of the construction of the seminal principles of ‘reasonableness’, ‘imminency’ and ‘proportionality’, England and Wales has yet to follow State v Wanrow (1977) 88 Wash. 2d 221, 559 P. 2d 548, where Wanrow successfully challenged her murder conviction on the grounds of a woman’s right to self-defence where the Washington Supreme Court recognised her inability and her inherent disproportionality to ‘effectively repel a male assailant without resorting to the use of deadly weapons’ – arguments advanced by the phenomenal advocacy of her lawyer’s co-counsel Elizabeth Schneider (the expert witness testimony having been excluded at trial).
Such progressive understanding was echoed by Madame Justice L›Heureux-Dubé in R v Lavallee [1990] (SSC) 1 SCR 852 in the Supreme Court of Canada which, contrary to the lower court, ruled expert testimony admissible and held that expert evidence can assist the jury in dispelling myths about battered women. The expert drew on the findings of Walker and other experts in the field (at 878-891).
In England and Wales in R v Hasan [2005] UKHL 31 – a case where a duress defence was mounted and unavailable because of Hasan’s voluntary gang association – Baroness Hale seized the opportunity to critique the masculinism of the duress doctrine and inequity in life and in law particularly where women face male body force in intimate partner relations.
It should be more broadly recognised that in survival mode and in the moment of perceived danger women who act in self-defence act reasonably in striking their aggressor with a weapon because of their lesser size and strength.
The Sentencing Code (Sch 21, para 4.2) sets a 25-year starting point for murder committed with knives/weapons, and in manslaughter weapons are an aggravating factor, penal policy holding gangs not defenceless abused women in their contemplation. The Wade Review on Domestic Homicide Sentencing (2023) proposed a disapplication for victims of intimate partner violence. This was rejected by the government but will be considered as part of the Law Commission’s homicide review including defences to murder for victims of abuse who kill abusers.
While we continue to wait for reform to the law in this area, an IPA expert can be of vital assistance to the court. They can speak to the background of abuse and a victim’s heightened specialist knowledge of an intimate partner’s propensity for violence and coercion, which impacts on the victim’s assessment of the necessity for, and timing of, a self-defensive response. We have come some way from Devlin J who rejected this as irrelevant in the seminal provocation case of R v Duffy [1949] 2 All ER 932 (the defendant killed her violent abusive husband) – but not far enough.
As for Combs, who has remained in custody since 16 September 2024, he awaits sentencing on 3 October 2025, the judge having denied his lawyers’ request for an acquital or re-trial. Similar cases indicate Combs can expect at least five years and supervised release for life (see United States v Biancofiori (2024)). S Y v Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc (2021) is also interesting where a trafficked victim sued the hotel in which the offence(s) occurred. Further litigation involving Combs can be expected.
As for coercive control in intimate partner violence and abuse, until changes are instituted the expert witness remains vital to realigning the tilted scales of law and justice in such cases.
Sky News, 2025: Gemma Peplow, ‘Diddy trial: What we learned from Cassie’s testimony’, Sky News, 16 May 2025
USA v Combs, Defence application in limine to preclude expert witness opinion, 2 April 2025
Eric Lasker and Joshua Leader, ‘New Federal Rule of Evidence Rule 702’, Defense Counsel Journal, Summer 2024
The Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review undertaken by independent reviewer Clare Wade KC and the government response
United States v Biancofiori (2024) United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. February 28, 2024 94 F.4th 651 2024 WL 830305 21-3372
SY v Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (2021) United States District Court, M.D. Florida, Fort Myers Division. February 16, 2021 519 F.Supp.3d 1069 2021 WL 597697 2:20-CV-626-FTM-29MRM
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