Mo’ Money, Less Problems?
What’s next for Puffy.

Mr. George is an editorial page writer for the New York Post
March 19, 2001 12:30 p.m.

s this column predicted two weeks ago, Puffy Combs beat the rap last Friday. This column also predicted his young colleague, Jamaal "Shyne" Barrows, an up-and-coming rapper on Combs's Bad Boy label would likely end up serving the big prison time.

Sure enough, Puffy was not guilty on all counts of gun possession and bribery. Shyne was found not guilty of attempted murder, but guilty of first-degree assault and gun possession. He's facing 25 years.

The temptation is to think of this as a third-rate rerun of the O. J. Simpson trial. Johnnie Cochran's presence certainly forced a superficial similarity. In fact, while the jury was deliberating, one wag was known to observe, "Well, at least they've learned one thing from the O.J. trial: Wait, a respectable period of time before you choose to ignore the evidence and acquit the guy."

But that's just a joke. While the Simpson drama was a murder trial that was not about race, except for the defense lawyers forcing it to be about race, the Combs trial wasn't about race either.

In both cases, it was definitely about celebrity. If anything, Combs's fate vividly demonstrated something that was overshadowed in the earlier psycho/judicial saga because of the passions unleashed from the O.J. verdicts. To quote Michael Jackson, "it doesn't matter if you're black or white" — if you have the resources to hire A-1 legal talent. Black or white celebrities who have the power to hire lawyers like Cochran and Brafman have at their disposal resources that put the state on the defensive — an imbalance of power not usually seen in criminal cases. Green trumps black or white in many situations.

This case was all about the benjamins — money — in another way, one that would prove fatal to the prosecution. While the O.J. civil verdict — and its $30 million-plus judgment against Simpson — served to bring a measure of justice (though the Juice has turned over hardly any money to the Goldmans and the Browns so far), the money lust for many of the people in the nightclub on Dec. 27, 1999 helped corrode the prosecution's case.

As an alternate juror stated earlier in the week (well before the verdicts came back), the fact that most prosecution witnesses had already filed lawsuits against Combs (one to the tune of $800 million) that made their testimony seriously suspect. The list of litigant-witnesses included Combs's driver that night, Wardel Fenderson, who gave some of the most damaging testimony against the rap mogul.

The aforementioned alternate juror who rightly predicted that Combs would walk caused other questions to be raised: She seemed to have a remarkably high regard for Puff Daddy. She might not have been a "fan," per se, but it seemed that she knew more about who Combs was and his background than you might want in a juror. If she managed to survive all the way to the alternate-juror status, one can rightly wonder whether the prosecution did a good enough job during voir dire.

Regardless, in contrast to the prosecution's difficult witnesses, the defense's call of Sharise Myers, a security guard in the nightclub, turned out to be a master stroke. She testified that she had fallen on top of Combs when the shooting started and that she hadn't seen a gun in his possession. Her words seemed to stand out from the litany of "Yes, he did have a guy/No, he didn't" cacophony of conflicting testimony.

Finally, distinguishing itself from O.J.'s trial was the fact that the defendant took the stand in his own defense. Apparently the jury was ready to believe Combs — and he didn't let them down.

Thus, while the inclination of those generally suspicious of rap celebrities in general might be to think that another jury screwed up with one more thug walking, this might actually be a situation where the legal system works its will in the best, most human (therefore imperfect) way possible. True Puffy is no angel (he plea-bargained out of an assault conviction a year ago), but Brafman and Cochran were hired to introduce reasonable doubt in the case of the People of New York vs. Sean Combs, involving shooting and bribery.

They did their job.

Puffy is now free — to fight a billion dollars in lawsuits, plus a further legal action taken by the mother of his son, claiming that he owes more in child support.

Maybe he was right when he produced the song, "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems."