I'm Laura Coates, and this is Trial by Jury: Diddy. Before we get into what happened today, here's what happened yesterday on the stand.

Dramatic testimony today in the Sean Combs Sex Trafficking and Racketeering Trial. Bryana Bongolan, and she goes by "Bana." Well, she alleged that Sean Combs dangled her over the 17th floor balcony. She talked about how she still has nightmares about that balcony incident. She told the jury that incident left her bruised and injured her neck and back.

My partner in the court, Elizabeth Wagmeister, has been in the trenches. Today was no exception. Let's hear what she saw.

'Laura, the government has called its third alleged victim in this case, who will be the final victim that they present to the jury. The first victim that was presented by the government, of course, being Cassie Ventura, and the second being Mia. Now, this third woman, her name is Jane, well, at least that's her name in front of the jury, she is testifying under her pseudonym in order to protect her anonymity. And what really stood out to me is that this woman, her testimony, is going to be similar to Cassie's in the sense that these are both former girlfriends, former romantic partners. Now, in comparison to Mia, Mia was a former employee. She had no romantic history with Sean Combs. Of course, in these cases, there's a lot of gray area when a victim that's presented is a former romantic partner. It can be hard for a jury to understand, how could you be in a relationship but also claim that you were sex trafficked? This is just something that over the years, certainly since the Me Too movement... I have seen with my own coverage on the ground in many different trials. The evolution of the public understanding and the public education on typical behaviors among victims. You know, pre-me too people really were not aware of the word consent. They did not understand why victims or alleged victims rather would keep going back and would stay in a relationship. And although things have evolved, I do believe based on my reporting that it is still very difficult. So I say that because when Jane starts her testimony off talking about how her and Sean Combs were in this relationship, he pursued her, he courted her, everything was great. She was so in love, she fell head over heels, and that she even agreed to his sexual appetite, we'll call it. Which some people may find peculiar, even before she says that he introduced other men into their sex life, which she said she did not like and she made clear to him that she did not like more on that in a second. She did explain their sex life, their private sex life just between the two of them and she said that they would watch pornography during it, that there were red lights on in the bedroom, that they put baby oil all over each other. So she's painting a picture here that again to some jurors this may seem completely out of the ordinary and Jane is saying that she liked it at that point. So now fast forward to what I wanted to get back to which is she said that Sean Combs then introduced his fantasy of having other men there. She called them hotel nights that's the same thing as a freak off. So again, similar allegations to Cassie. Now she said that she did it once to make him happy. She was nervous and she actually said it was exciting. She said they were doing something that was taboo. That was crazy. Those are the words that she used, but she felt like it brought them closer since they did something that she had never done before. But then what she learned is that Sean Combs allegedly only wanted to do this repeatedly. She said that after that first time for the rest of their relationship... That 90% of the time that they had sex, there were other men there, and she said that she told them she did not want to do this, both verbally and in writing. She said most times she communicated that she did want to this in writing, and I point that out because to me it seems likely that the prosecutors are now going to show evidence of that communication. We'll probably see texts or emails where she says, no, I don't want to do this. But she also said that Sean combs was paying for her rent and that when she communicated to him, I do not want to have sex with other men. I just want to be with you that he then said, okay, we can break up. Or he would say, I'm not going to pay your rent. So very complicated. Again, this is just day one, really our one of Jane's testimony. So much more to come. But my initial thoughts, again, based on my reporting on high-profile cases like these is that this can be very complex for a jury to understand.

Oh my goodness, there was a moment in court today. Let me just paint this picture for you all. So whenever there is a break in the testimony and the judge says, let's all go to break, the jury leaves the room, the attorneys hang back, Diddy stays there as well. As I'm lingering back, everyone's basically left the area thinking, all right, we've got time to get a quick lunch and then come back in. And the judge then says, let me make my own record. He begins to ask a question, and he is peppering Marc Agniflo, who is the lead defense counsel. And he's saying to him, I made it so clear this morning. And he begins to describe his frustration about having witnessed, he says, the defendant, Sean Diddy Combs, looking at the jurors, nodding in their direction. And he says I was clear this mornin, no one was supposed to in some way, and do those sorts of things or have any reaction whatsoever to the testimony, and he went on again that he said Diddy was nodding his head and looking at the jury. He even made Marc Agnifilo answer the rhetorical question which was, was I not clear this morning? To which Agnifilo says, he was. Then he says, if it happens again, if it happened again, he could provide a curative instruction that they're not gonna like, including, possibly even preventing Sean Diddy Combs from being able to be in the courthouse or courtroom during his trial. Now, can you imagine, first of all, trying to explain to the jurors why a defendant was not there, A, and B, the constitutional right to confront one's accuser, how would that play out if there were a conviction and if this went up on appeal, that decision? But it was clearly a warning that this judge was keeping a very tight leash on this case on the defendant's ability to be able to react, what will his body language, his demeanor, his reaction, what will it all look like now?

Aren't you wondering what it must be like for defense attorneys to have heard a judge tell them that your client might be thrown out of the courtroom? You know what? I'm gonna talk to somebody who has handled a number of high profile celebrity cases, has been a prosecutor and defense attorney himself, and I'm going to pick his brain because Joe Tacopina is coming up.

I'm gonna go right now to Joe Takapena because he has been a defense attorney. He's been a prosecutor. He most recently successfully defended ASAP Rocky in his criminal trial. And I'm going to pick his brain on exactly what that moment would have been like and frankly, what he would tell his own client if he were representing Diddy.

I mean, I've tried 120 jury trials now, both as a prosecutor, defense attorney. And I'll tell you, it's not about not having reactions. He's a human. You know, you don't want his reactions to be looking to signal a jury. And that backfires sometimes. More often than not, quite frankly. I find jurors loathe that kind of maneuvering because they think that the defendant is trying to influence them. You know, there's no such thing as a defendant being able to look at a jury, nod in approval or just, you know, shake his head in disapproval. That is called communicating with a jury and you're not allowed to do that. You will be removed from a courtroom. I mean, even it even happened in the Trump trial, not mine, thank God, but one of the Trump trials where Judge Kaplan, in the Southern District, said, you know to President Trump that he's going to remove him because he would been making some, you know, sound or gestures to a jury. And, but it's uncommon because most defense lawyers are very firm with their clients about not doing that. Not only because of the ramifications that you just mentioned with this judge might do, which is horrific would be, either way, would be instruct the jury that they should disregard the defendant and try to communicate with them. Or remove him from courtroom, even worse. But there's also concern that a juror is gonna pick up on that and be offended by it. No jurors want the defendant to be signaling what they think is right or not right. Get up on the witness stand and testify if you wanna communicate to the jury. And so it's even worse if you do that and then don't get up and testify. Jurors will hold that against you. There's a zero benefit to that at all.

'You know that is so insightful to think about how diverse the reactions from the juror's might be it's there's no one-size-fits-all a fool's errand to predict how they might be and then you also have this idea of course the judge's concern is that they might feel intimidated by this person uh... And that they might try to change the way they themselves maneuver. But so what if the judge were to remove Diddy from the courtroom for some part of the trial or what would happen.

If he acts in a way that's been disruptive and he's been warned now twice, um, and ultimately it leads to his removal from the courtroom because he can't control himself, there's no appellate court that's going to accept that.

Initially telling a defendant generically not to have anything to the jury and then secondly in the courtroom making the statement

Correct, I've been told that this was not the first time that he had been sort of making open gestures, maybe not looking at the jury and doing it, but there was already, in my understanding, a preliminary discussion. I think that was more of a generic warning, but this one was direct and on point, and that's enough. I mean, you only need to be warned once, and if he does it again, there's gonna be action taken, and that would be the worst thing to happen, because don't forget what this whole case is about. This case is about him being a bad guy, and he's been proven to be a bad guy. He's been proved to be domestic batterer. He has been proven to be a criminal.

You're saying had he been charged with domestic violence or the abuse, that would have been something he's already admitted to in the opening statements, by the way.

'You know, the jurors already heard a lot of not great things about this. They had really bad things about him. I mean, just the way you control people, the way he abused people. If they now are being told that he's no longer in the courtroom because he can't control himself or even to not be called that, if he's not in the courtroom, they'll understand why he's no longer the courtroom. That is such a death knell to him, because even in this moment, it shows in the serenity of a courtroom, not in a drug-infested freak off. But here, when your life is on the line, you can't even control yourself.

Mmm.

That's a problem, and I think that would be the worst thing that could happen to the defense in this case.

I think you make such an important distinction for everyone listening the idea it's not about reacting he hasn't had to become a cardboard cut out of himself but it is the attempt or the the hint of impropriety the hint at attempting to engage and given the testimony that's come in for these jurors and i'm speculating because i'm not a member of this jury right neither one of us are but given the test we have come into your point of him being violent of him being an intimidating figure to those who knew him best. If the eye contact is interpreted adding on to what they believe he is and is like, that could be, from the judge's perspective, a reason to think they could be intimidated or even tampered with.

'Correct, and I just had a trial, the ASAP Rocky trial in Los Angeles, where I spoke to the jurors after that case, and one of the prosecutors had taken to— it was the oddest thing I'd actually ever seen, but he'd taken to always turning around and looking at the jury and staring at the jury, like literally hard-core staring at jurors during the middle of testimony to see how they were reacting. Multiple jurors told me, and I spoke to about seven of the jurors at the trial. Multiple jurors told me they thought that prosecutor was trying to intimidate them. They found that offensive. They thought he was trying to intimidated them. I don't know if he was trying to intimidate them or that was just his tick or his mannerism. He just stared at jurors. He was staring at me when I was questioning. It was a weird thing. But putting that aside, the jurors are very in tune to what's going on in that courtroom. Don't forget, you have 24 eyeballs, right? You have 12 people. They catch it all one way or another. It's a New York City jury. And I've tried a lot of them from New York city. They're not so forgiving necessarily when people come up and testified with a bag full of excuses. You know, it's fair game to ask why Cassie didn't go to the police all these years. Instead, she went to a money lawyer x years, a decade later, to get money. She wrote a manuscript and was wanting to sell for 30 million dollars, she wanted to get 20 million dollars.

So you don't buy the expert testimony?

I'm not saying that's a cookie cutter response for everyone, but these are things that people have the right to understand to value in someone's credibility.

When you're looking at this case from 10,000 feet back, but with your insight as defense and prosecution, do you think the jurors so far are on board with the prosecution? Are they either clutching their pearls from the sex discussions or are they wondering is this what Rico was for?

Listen, you have to be careful about overdoing it with the sex stuff, right? Because from the defense, I'm gonna stand up and say, listen, they played you that video tape, that disgusting video tape. And I would embrace the fact that it is horrific what he did to Cassie in that hallway. You have to embrace it. You have a little more harsh on your client than the prosecution is gonna be actually when it comes to that tape. But they've played that a dozen times. I think they're gonna become a little numb to it. I think the impact of that tape may be dissipating every time they play it. It's not gonna have that same effect Because when you first see it... I mean, I don't think they have to play that tape a dozen times during the trial to play it when she testified. They played in the opening statement, and they played in summation. But when you play that thing a dozen times, the jurors start getting almost immunized to the effect of it.

So what would you need to see from the prosecution? Say you're a juror, say you're defense. What keeps you up at night knowing that they might drop this evidence or this type of witness might testify?

Look, I think what they're gonna do at the end when they tie all this up is say, look, all these acts, the bribing of the witness for the tape, the blowing up Kid Cudi's car, the threatening people, even the Cassie tape, what I would argue if I were the prosecution is we're not showing you that because he's a horrific guy and he's domestic abuser. We know he is, okay, they've admitted he is. We're showing you, ladies and gentlemen, the jury as a prosecutor, I would say, to show you what happens when you try to escape his orbit. When you try and leave one of his free golfs, that's what happens to you. So when you say this is voluntary, when the defense stands up and says, this is all voluntary, there's your evidence that it's not voluntary at all.

Final question for you, Joe, and I could talk to you all day because your insight really is invaluable. Should Diddy testify? Would you recommend he did?

Get out of here! Okay.

I knew you were going to say that, but I still had to ask you.

'We'd be here until Christmas, okay, on his cross-examination. Here's why he shouldn't testify. And I'd been marketing their flows, told me and said publicly, wild horses can't keep him off the witness stand. And you know, with his personality, with that sort of king complex that he has, he may want to get up on that stand. But my God, he will have to answer every question about every act that we've heard about in this case. And when that happens, when you put a defendant on the stand, especially this defendant with these allegations. What happens is all the damage you've done to the prosecution's case and all the damage you done to witnesses credibility by bringing out inconsistent statements or you know lies or motives or all these different things that all becomes background noise. Okay what's now the focus of this jury is did he lie? Is he credible because if he gets up there and is caught in a lie or appears to be caught in the lie or sounds like he's full of it nothing else matters it's game set and match it's over he's getting of it. Because there's no way he could answer why he did that test. There's no he could get answer where her gas came from. There's no way he's gonna answer the Kid Cudi questions about that car, okay? He's gonna say he didn't do it. If the jury doesn't believe that, then he lied to a jury, he's purging himself for the jury, and they'll convict him on that alone. They were cross-examining the witnesses as he didn't do it, if he gets up there and doesn't have an explanation as to why he said those things, and just, I mean, he must be the luckiest guy in the world. That he was talking about blowing up some guy's car, he decided not to do it, but lo and behold, someone else did it. Like, come on. So he's gonna have to answer questions that are unanswerable, that will keep him up there, and more importantly, will shift the focus away from the deficiencies in the prosecution's case onto his credibility, and that is not a risk I would take if I were him, and if I were his defense lawyer, I would tie him down to that chair and not let him get up there. But we'll see. It would be for great entertainment. Maybe give us another two months to talk about this trial, so.

Joe Tacopina, really, really insightful. Glad to talk to you, my friend. Talk soon, okay?

Okay, bye. Bye bye. Thanks

Make sure to follow Trial By Jury from CNN wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Dan Bloom, Lori Galarreta, Sofia Sanchez, Alexandra Saddler, and Rachid Haoues. Our technical director is Dan Dzula, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig, with support from Emily Williams, Robert Mathers, Alex Manasseri and Lisa Namerow. I'm Laura Coates, and I'm here for it.