Another day of Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ federal sex trafficking trial was scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, but it wasn’t until a few minutes before 9 when Judge Arun Subramanian entered the courtroom with a surprising announcement: court was canceled for the day.
Subramanian explained that a juror was on his way into court, when he started experiencing “vertigo symptoms” and had to turn around. The judge described it as an “unexpected and possibly momentary issue.”
Subramanian said he would make further inquiries, but that he didn’t see a need to remove the juror at this point, and lead prosecutor Maureen Comey agreed with his assessment.
There is no court on Thursday, so the trial will resume on Friday.
Unexpected illness was not the only juror-related issue to hit the trial this week. A man was removed from the jury on Monday and replaced by an alternate, against the wishes of the defense.
In addition, there is a not-yet-public issue with a second juror that popped up at the end of last week and has so far only been addressed behind closed doors. However, information about one of those meetings was leaked in an article published Monday.
On Tuesday morning, Judge Subramanian castigated both prosecution and defense before testimony began, saying that the information in the article must have come from one of the two sides.
“Everyone here is on notice that if there is any further violation of this Court’s orders or the rules of conduct applicable to these proceedings, that violation will be met with a formal inquiry with people testifying under oath, the delivery of devices and communications to this Court for review and possible civil or criminal sanctions,” the judge said.
