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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is headed to trial in his sex trafficking and racketeering case. The high-profile proceeding begins on Monday, May 5 in New York City, when attorneys will start the process of selecting the jury who will decide Diddy’s fate. Opening statements are expected on May 12. 

Diddy – who has pleaded not guilty – is facing the possibility of life in prison if convicted. But given all the media attention around the case, will it be possible to find a group of truly unbiased jurors to weigh all the evidence against the hip-hop mogul? Here’s what we know about jury selection for Diddy’s trial, including why the members of the jury will not be known to the public. 

The jury members in Diddy’s trial will not be known to the public 

Hundreds of people from across New York state will have received a summons and filled out a questionnaire where they are asked what they know about the Diddy case. The survey includes 20 to 70 questions, Fox 5 New York (via YouTube) reports, including those that ask people how they feel about the nature of the charges against the Bad Boy Records founder, their experience with sexual harassment and domestic violence, and their own drug and alcohol use.

Attorneys on both sides will use those answers to create a list of people who they want to move on to the next step in the jury selection process, or voir dire, which is when the judge questions potential jurors in person and dismiss those whom he feels can’t be impartial. Ultimately, the list of prospective jurors will be whittled down to just 18: 12 jurors and six alternates. Those dozen jurors will decide the rapper’s fate at the end of the trial, which will likely last between eight and 10 weeks. 

The identity of the jurors will be known to the U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, as well as lawyers for both the defense and the prosecution. But their names won’t be made public. Instead, they’ll be identified by number. That’s not unusual in high-profile criminal cases, where there is a desire to protect jurors from threats or harassment, Reuters noted. 

Seating an unbiased jury will be hard

Selecting the jury for Diddy’s trial won’t be an easy process. Extensive media coverage and the defendant’s long career in the public eye means that many people have likely already formed an opinion about his guilt or innocence. Lawyers for both sides will likely dig deep to find out if someone might be biased, including reviewing people’s social media accounts, a source told Reuters.  

“Prosecutors will seek to neutralize Combs’s celebrity aura. They don’t want a fan club in the jury box, so they may strike potential jurors who are star-struck and remind jurors that being famous doesn’t put Combs above the law,” noted a blog post from Carolina Attorneys. Meanwhile, Diddy’s defense attorney will wants to find “jurors who can give Combs a fair shake. Defense attorneys try to eliminate anyone with a fixed negative view – if someone says they’re outraged by the charges or has been saturated in one-sided media coverage.”

Once the trial begins, it’s not clear if the jury will be sequestered, or isolated in order to keep them from being tainted by outside influences. Sequestration is not common, but it does sometimes happen in high-profile cases, such as the 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson and Billy Cosby’s 2017 sexual assault trial.    

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