Diddy's defense lawyer cried out for a mistrial Wednesday ... after a witness revealed fingerprints connected to the alleged break-in at Kid Cudi's Hollywood Hills house had been destroyed.
00:00So, allegations this morning in the Diddy trial of Dirty Poole on the part of prosecutors for trying to poison the jury.
00:09So dirty, according to Diddy's defense, that they demanded a mistrial in this whole case,
00:17which, as you can imagine, caused quite an uproar in court and a lot of arguing about this.
00:24He said it all has to do with Kid Cudi's car and the fire that was set off in his Porsche and the investigation into all of this.
00:34So what happened here is that you know that there was testimony about a burglary at Kid Cudi's house.
00:41About the month before the fire.
00:44Right. And that Diddy and an assistant had basically broken into Cudi's house, found a gift that he was going to, that Cudi was going to give Cassie.
00:56And there's evidence that Diddy was there.
01:00The, Cudi took a fingerprint from.
01:03The investigators did.
01:04Well, Cudi gave the fingerprint to the investigator.
01:07It was a fingerprint that was on the door and it was of an unknown woman, but they had a fingerprint.
01:15What the, what the prosecution tried to do was insinuate that they could take that fingerprint and tie it to a fingerprint on the arson attack on the, on the Porsche.
01:28Well, guess what?
01:30Cudi's fingerprint that he took off that door was gone.
01:33It was destroyed at some point that after it was in police custody, that was destroyed.
01:40And when the prosecution raised that during the testimony from an arson investigator, the defense said, hold on a second.
01:51It's like the, the scene is, wait, you're out of order.
01:54This whole court's out of order.
01:55They were very upset and felt that this was grounds for a mistrial because they had, what they felt is the prosecutors were insinuating Diddy somehow had something to do with the destruction.
02:08Which is so, which is sort of like losing the Cassie video in 2016 at the Intercontinental.
02:14Yes.
02:15Yes.
02:15There's two big issues with presenting this kind of testimony to the jury.
02:18One, they might think you're trying to draw a connection where you have none.
02:22You have one set of fingerprints and you're testifying about another set of fingerprints that you can't actually connect.
02:26The other problem is this had only happened around eight months before that evidence was destroyed.
02:31So it plants the seed, according to Diddy's defense team, that Diddy was somehow behind the destruction of evidence, maybe paid off an LAPD official.
02:39And you remember during the jury selection process, a lot of people said that they thought Diddy was a rich and powerful person who could make things go away.
02:46Yeah.
02:46And, and, and the defense is saying that prosecution is playing into that conspiracy theory that maybe is already out there in the jury pool.
02:53Yeah, but there's no evidence that, uh, Diddy paid anybody off or anything.
02:57No, which is mandatory to a jury, it could make them sort of prejudice against, against Diddy, just a mere thought in front of them.
03:04It's hard to unring the bell.
03:05This just seems like a small insignificant thing that the defense is saying.
03:09Well, I don't know.
03:11I don't think it's, I don't think it's insignificant.
03:14No, because clearly people think that.
03:16I mean, there's a rule for the prosecution in this is like a nothing thing.
03:20Well, you're right that the judge just said, hey, jurors, don't listen to that testimony.
03:23Struck the testimony, but didn't, didn't declare mistrial.
03:26Let's get, hold on, get real for a second.
03:28What the prosecution is saying or insinuating, according to the defense, is Diddy knew those fingerprints were going to incriminate him via some associate and connect him to the arson and then the burglary.
03:44And by the way, there was also testimony from an LAPD officer that the car, they, they had a photo and they saw the, the car that was, or an SUV that was parked in front of the house led back to, it was owned by bad boy.
03:59So again, but that's, that's at least, that's at least hard evidence, but to, but the insinuation is that Diddy destroyed the fingerprint because it incriminated him in the arson and connected him to the burglary.
04:14I have a very important question.
04:15I have a very important question.
04:17There's reasonable doubt here.
04:19It is an insinuation, but here's my question.
04:22Did the LAPD officer offer any explanation why evidence from an investigation that was less than a year old, that was at that point, seven, eight months.
04:32Was destroyed.
04:33Why was it destroyed?
04:34Now I'm not insinuating anything, but I, if I'm on the jury, I want to know why was it destroyed?
04:40Well, let me tell you, they, they watch CSP.
04:41It's a great point though, Charles.
04:42It's a, it's a great point because why was evidence that's so fresh destroyed?
04:45This isn't a cold case from 25 years ago where you're clearing out the decks for new evidence coming in.
04:50This is a very fresh case.
04:50Why was it destroyed?
04:51The person investigator who mentioned that they were destroyed, he said it was strange that they were, he would have needed to sign off on something like that.
04:58And somebody went around him and did this.
05:00So, so when, when, when was it, what, what year, this is important.
05:03What year was it destroyed and what year was the, and what year, and what year, and what year, and what year was the arson?
05:09The arson was in January of 2012 and the burglary was December of 2011.
05:13So about eight months.
05:14So here's the thing.
05:15And people in the jury watch CSI.
05:19The statute of limitations had not run.
05:21This is very true.
05:21The statute of limitations had not run.
05:23Why would they destroy evidence when it's still a live case that can be prosecuted if they get more evidence, especially when it involves a celebrity as big as Diddy?
05:37Why would something that critical be destroyed?
05:40Why do I feel like, as you're speaking right now, you're making the defense's case for a mistrial?
05:46I'm saying, I'm saying that it's powerful.
05:48Yeah, it is very powerful.
05:50I don't.
05:51So who destroyed it and why?
05:53Well, by the way, the bottom line here is the judge refused to declare a mistrial.
05:58There was no mistrial.
05:59But the judge did do something that I always think is interesting in a trial.
06:03The judge said that the jury gave them instructions.
06:06They cannot consider any of the testimony about the fingerprints, either at the burglary or at the fire.
06:16That's the biggest crock of all.
06:17So the jury is going to act like they did it.
06:20The biggest crock of all trials is telling the jury, don't listen to something you just heard.
06:24But just remember it.
06:26Expunge it from your brain.
06:27It's not practical, but it's something the judge has to do.
06:29Plus, the defense made such a big stink about it that you've got to think, oh, why are they raising this?
06:34Exactly.
06:35It makes it even worse.
06:36Something has to happen.
06:37They got rattled.
06:37People's brains are not like an Etch-A-Sketch.
06:40And the reality here is that on appeal, this could come up.
06:46Because, look, if the—and look, I think it is interesting.
06:50Why was it destroyed?
06:52Because, look, a lot of people are going to say that Diddy also destroyed the original video at the Intercontinental Hotel in 2016.
07:01So if he's capable of doing that, did he destroy the fingerprint or did he pay somebody off, you know, to destroy the fingerprint in 2011 or 2012?
07:12And, you know, look, there's no proof that happened.
07:17But how, you know, the jury—
07:18How does the jury not to make that leap?
07:19How does the jury not—that's right.
07:20How do you bring it up on appeal if you don't know what the answer is?
07:24No, you bring up the prejudice to their client.
07:26Yeah, that's exactly right.
07:27What you do is you preserve it for appeal and you say, the judge overruled me, didn't declare a mistrial.
07:31That was an error.
07:32And now they have a grounds for appeal.
07:33I'd be interested to see if he loses and gets convicted, what they do with this.
07:37I'm Brooke.
07:38I'm from the UK.
07:39I think the defense team is just scrambling.
07:41I think it's clearly obvious, you know, Diddy is a powerful man.
07:45It's within his power to get these things done behind the scenes.
07:48People have known about him for years.
07:50There's been rumors for years.
07:51I'm not even in the country and I've known there's rumors about this man for years.
07:53I think he's clearly guilty.
07:55We've seen it.
07:56The public knows it.
07:57Let's just get justice done and get justice for these women, please.
08:01There's something called a trial.
08:03Right.
08:03And you kind of want to go through the trial before you're guilty.
08:07Yeah, you don't want to skip over the trial part.
08:09That's not how it works in this country or even in yours.
