'I'm Laura Coates and this is Trial by Jury. Well, it was another day of graphic and intense testimony coming in from a pseudonymed witness who is an alleged victim in Sean Diddy Combs' felony RICO, sex trafficking, and prostitution trial. It's now been running for over a month. While she's being cross-examined and tested strongly by the defense counsel, CNN's own Kara Scannell has been covering the trial and she's got an update for us for the week so far. Kara, tell us the very latest.

'After three days on the witness stand, Combs' lawyers had their first chance to cross-examine his former girlfriend, who's testifying under the pseudonym Jane. Their goal was to try to undercut the prosecution's allegation that Jane was drugged and forced into having sex with men while Combs watched. So Combs' lawyer, Teny Geragos, asked Jane about that drug use. Jane said that Combs offered her ecstasy, and she testified that he expected her to take it. Well, Geragos asked Jane twice what her age was at the time that she and Combs started dating. Jane said she was 35 years old, and Geragos just let that kind of hang in the air. Now, Jane has also repeatedly testified that she wanted to be with Combs and was jealous that she would have these "hotel nights" with him, which she said she did not want to do. But other girls that Combs dated would go on vacations, get gifts, and go out to dinner, all the things that she said that she'd wanted. So Geragos quizzed Jane about the various ways that she benefited from the relationship with Combs. Combs invested $20,000 in Jane's dress line. He paid her rent on a $10,000 a month home and he bought her a luxury Bottega handbag and jewelry. And this led to a pretty tense exchange. Geragas asked, what is a Bottega bag? Jane testified, I'm sure you have one. Geragus said, I actually don't. What is a Bottega bag? Jane said, it's a high-end luxury purse for women. Garagos asked, how much do Bottega bags run? And Jane said how much does my body cost? Then not long after, Jane asked for a break and was given one. When everyone came back into the courtroom, she apologized to Geragos, who brushed it off. But Jane was also confronted with numerous text messages where she appears to be agreeing to some of these hotel nights. Now she has maintained all along that she was reading undertones in these messages from Combs, and that she is accepting the offer made to her because it was the only way for her to see him. The cross-examination will resume on Wednesday. She is expected to be on the stand through Thursday.

CNN correspondent Kara Scannell, thank you so much for being our eyes and ears today and every day. She is just a few feet from Sean Diddy Combs inside that courtroom.

His trial is not wrapping anytime soon. But today, I'm sitting down with Perry Sanders Jr. Now he is a defense attorney who managed one of the most infamous estates in the entire hip hop world. I'm talking about the estate of the rap icon and really former best friend of one Sean Diddy Combs, I'm taking about Notorious B.I.G., Christopher Wallace, who was killed in 1997 in Los Angeles while riding near Sean Diddy Combs. Now Perry, he has also been face to face with Diddy, or Puffy back then, himself when he deposed him in a lawsuit related to Biggie's death. Perry, I'm so glad you're here because I have been wanting to, ever since our first conversation, to kind of pick your brain about how you're seeing this entire trial go down, because you're one of the few people in this world really who has deposed Sean Diddy Combs, who has seen him up close and personal in this legal setting. Can you describe for me why you were deposing him in the first instance?

Because he was in the car in front of the car that Christopher Wallace was in when he was assassinated, and I was deposing everybody that came anywhere near that scene and it turned out he was unfortunately had gone through the red light and the driver of Christopher's car did not go through the red light. It sat there, and there was a car that either pulled up or had been sitting there, a black Impala, and waiting to assassinate either Sean or Biggie, one of the two.

So many people remember that day, myself included, when that news came out and thought, wow, my god, I can't believe this has happened. Of course, at the time, he was one of the biggest hip hop artists out there. I mean, it's mind blowing to think about going from that point in time to where we are right now, and Sean Diddy Combs now on trial. Really, he could face life in prison, Perry, as you well know, if he were to be convicted. Your deposition was about a civil suit, not involving the crimes at all, in terms of a criminal prosecution, but you said he was charming. And I lean into that even more because I've heard that word from really every witness, it seems, during this trial. Did that surprise you?

Um, not having met him that time. And I imagine a whole lot of people that have met him in the course of their lives were charmed. And if you were only charmed momentarily, you probably had a good experience with him, like, like my experience, it sounds like the, if there was a bit of a pattern of if you got sucked in and stayed too long, the demands got greater and greater and greater to the point where they were demands that it sounds like people, you know, if you believe the witnesses, which are under oath, it sounds like people ultimately were doing things that they were not interested in doing any longer. What might've seemed like a little thrill at first becomes a job.

You know, I'm intrigued by this notion of this wall of silence. And we hear all sorts of iterations of the wall of silence, whether it's snitches get stitches, or if you see something, say something, or any line of things people say.

It's the classic, nobody talks, everybody walks.

Yeah.

It's classic sort of big group of people doing things wrong behavior. And that was always the expression when I was doing a lot of criminal defense. It was definitely a, uh, there was a code of silence guaranteed within those people, and it wasn't worth trying to get them to say anything because they'd rather, they'd rather go to jail for life than get killed.

'Well, the reason it intrigues me in particular in a case like this is because a lot of the testimony that's come in from people who are either observing or somehow tangentially related to this so-called inner circle that the government wants to prove through a racketeering RICO case as an enterprise, that what some people would colloquially call an enabler, the wall of silence might have different implications if you're talking about the criminal context. From what your experience has been in defending these cases and also looking at what you're seeing now, how odd is it that behavior that he is alleged to have been doing went on for so long without there being criminal consequences?

I think it's fair to say that if this is so different than the typical case where you've got racketeering activity, where there's a boss that is a puppeteer and controlling lots of people that are typically moving drugs or guns or something like that, and everybody's just in it strictly for the money. It's a totally different deal than that. I guess it's got some tangential sort of similarities in that you get sucked in for whatever reason. In this case, it's obviously radically different than that. So this is by far the most oddball racketeering case I think I've seen.

Oddball because this is not the type of conduct that normally Rico would cover, or oddball for other reasons.

Well, I mean, Rico covers all sorts of things, as you know, including financial crimes to where more people get together, they scheme and next thing you know they're defrauding people out of money. This strikes me different because you have a handful of people in the world that have the gravitas to be able to lure people in through charm and blah, blah, and the next thing, you know if you believe the witnesses, the next thing it turns quite dark. And the, the testimony I think from yesterday of Jane Doe, the testimony of that sort of took it from, hey this was kind of fun at first or whatever or you know I was a willing participant, to this became a real ugly job, you know, they're they're obviously swingers in the world they do all kind of stuff and that's what turns them on and that how they run their life but when it turns into something it's not what turns you on and it becomes a job, that obviously is quite different.

Let's talk about your experience as somebody who handles civil lawsuits. Obviously, you first met Diddy and came across him when you were deposing him in a civil lawsuit. Some of the people who are testifying in this case have civil lawsuits, or they're hoping to file one. Some have already settled one for the case of Cassie Ventura at the very least. And as you can imagine, The defense attorneys are all over it, like white on rice, and they are trying to make sure that they are using that to undermine the credibility of the witnesses. How, can you just talk a little bit about this sort of, symbiotic relationship at times between these civil lawsuits and the criminal prosecutions. Is the fact that you're involved in one negate the other?

Well, there's no two ways about one thing. If you decide to sue somebody, you have, and you're suing them for money. You have a financial motive to prevail. And when you get put in a situation like they're put in here at trial to make their case, boy, in a way, that's kind of an awkward situation. I think he preferred being in a civil deposition like the one I took of Puffy, where you're able to sit with your lawyer, you're talking to them throughout the deal, you're answering questions and you have a little bit better idea of what's coming, what the boundaries are that can be asked about. I think that there are boundaries obviously in a criminal case, but it's a little different than the civil setting and this is gonna give the civil lawyers two bites at the apple because all these witnesses will have been deposed once. And it's kind of hard for somebody that's just a pedestrian witness, not a professional witness to go on the stand for hours and hours and hours and for you not to be able to pluck a few gotcha moments out of there. In fact, I hadn't seen that many times ever. If somebody testifies long enough and you get to put them on the stand again, there frequently is an inconsistency between the second time and the first time. Just because of the volume of things that come out in the course of people testifying and people's minds go the way people's mind's go, you know, it's just a staying completely consistent is probably that probably favors in the civil trial. I don't think that it's helping him here at all. And it, but it obviously helps him to be able to say, you know, that you've got secondary gain motive to be testifying the way you are.

Well, you know, the judge has already ruled against a request for a mistrial that was initiated of course by the defense based on their belief that one witness who does have a civil lawsuit, that the government knowingly put up false information, essentially a misconduct claim that was made. The judge has denied it. But he did allude to a kind of Perry Mason moment in that the jury was able to see the inconsistencies he believes that you are pointing out. Are sometimes evident when you've got a civil versus criminal testimony happening. Let me ask this before you go, Perry, because I think it's so interesting to think about. Oftentimes, when you depose someone, you are seeing their antics, their narcissism, their reluctance, their shyness. It's on full display. Whatever they think they're going to be like at the beginning of a deposition reveals themselves later through the course of particularly a lengthy one. Given what you saw of Sean Dady Combs, do you think that he would testify successfully if he were to in this criminal trial?

I don't know, but if he did, he should get up and go, uh, I'm a criminal. I'm a felon, um, all that stuff, but I'm not all this other stuff. So take me like I am. I'm a criminal. I'm a felon. Um, I got carried away between drugs, sex and rock and roll and went too far, but I certainly wasn't trying to run a racketeering ring, blah, blah, blah, blah. If he got up and did that, there might be people that would believe. I mean, I had, I have a case one time where a guy that was charged with murder. He indeed was a criminal and they had proven up criminal activity at the trial. But the more, the more serious charge, I mean my exact argument to the jury was, Hey, he's a felon. There are no two ways about it. He is a felon. However, that's not the felony we're here for today. And the jury acquitted him because it was true. It was not the felony we were there for today. And he was a felon. He just wasn't the felon, he wasn't, it wasn't what he was charged with that day. And the juries found him not guilty of the charges that he had. That's why I'm always reluctant if somebody should be tried, the government, you know, potentially overstepping. And I'm not saying they're doing that here because they're good faith prosecutors and, and I think that they're doing what they think is right. But that is the risk you run in this situation is that somebody gets up, does exactly that and then had a jury look at the facts, look at the law and go, you know, right, he is a felon for this over here, but he is not a felon for what he's being charged for here today. So not guilty on the charge today.

A kind of remix on, I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy. I'm sure the Bob Marley estate right now is furious at the reference. Finally, if you are though, watching to see, if you're the civil attorney in charge of the civil matters and lawsuits against Sean Diddy Combs and knowing there's, there's the preponderance of evidence, a lower standard more likely than not, as opposed to beyond a reasonable doubt, you must be salivating at the prospect of Sean Diddy Combs testifying, because everything he says could be either useful or detrimental to your civil suit.

If the lawyers that have sued him are dying for him to testify, I'd be shocked. And they might even be dying for them to get off on the most serious thing, make sure he keeps the lion's share of his money and then, then get to take their civil cases forward because their obligation is to their individual clients. It's not to the state, it's not the federal government. It's to their individuals clients. And everybody has an ethical obligation to their clients. Sometimes that flies in the face of other people's obligations, like in this case, the US attorney who seemed to be doing a really good job unless I'm missing something.

No, I would say the counsel all around are certainly devoted to their cause and passion about it. And I'll close with this, because you raise a really fascinating point for our audience and that is the two words that perhaps civil litigators fear most if their case comes after criminal prosecution: asset forfeiture. If there's anything left to even continue to try to get later, if there's a conviction, the government wants the money, and they think in a RICO case that whatever may have been used as resources could essentially be part of the forfeited asset. So you raise a really fascinating point. I'm not surprised. I was really interested in hearing what you had to say. Thanks, Perry.

Thank you.

This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz, Graelyn Brashear, Alexandra Saddler, and Rachid Haoues. Our technical director is Dan Dzula, and the executive producer of Scene and Audio is Steve Lickteig. With support from Andrea Lewis, Mike Figliola, Dan Bloom, Hank Butler, Robert Mathers, Alex Manassari, and Lisa Namerow. I'm Laura Coates, and I'm here for it.