Diddy’s legal team has formally requested that the testimony from a psychologist be dismissed, accusing the testimony of amounting to “junk science.”
In a letter from lawyer Alexandra A.E. Shapiro, as reviewed by Complex, the team representing Diddy in his sex trafficking and racketeering trial has called into question a testimony from expert psychologist Dr. Dawn Hughes. “Hughes and the government continually violated the Court’s ruling limiting the scope of Hughes’ testimony,” the letter reads, accusing Hughes of expanding her answers “beyond the four corners of the prosecutor’s questions” and ignoring court-imposed limits. The team has also taken issue with her testimony on memory, which they called “junk science that will confuse rather than help the jury.”
The letter is addressed to Judge Arun Subramanian and asks for the testimony, which focused on the memory of assault victims among other subjects, to be struck from the record because it’s “not proper expert testimony,” comparing her testimony to “a Rorschach inkblot calculated to support any argument the prosecution may need to make in summation.” Dr. Dawn Hughes is a board-certified forensic psychologist and has previously taken the stand in cases such as R. Kelly’s federal trial and Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard.
During her testimony, she did not examine Diddy or all of the witnesses who testified at the trial. She spoke at length about “coping strategies, delayed disclosure, and memory,” but was barred from broaching the subject of “coercive control” or the potential motivations of Diddy. The disgraced music mogul’s legal team has accused Hughes of ignoring the court’s instruction not to discuss “interpersonal violence,” because she opened her testimony by telling the jury it was her specialty.
“The idea that mere fragments of long forgotten events, or memories retrieved from long ago, are just as accurate or reliable as coherent memories of more recent events is junk science,” reads the letter to the judge. “Hughes knows that. That’s why she couched her testimony in terms of a lack of evidence in the literature.” Shapiro also wrote that Hughes’ testimony was “unfairly prejudicial, confusing, and misleading.”
Hughes’ testimony is the latest to ruffle feathers in the high-profile case, coming less than a week after Kid Cudi’s explosive testimony. When the rapper took the stand, he suggested that Diddy broke into his house after he learned about his relationship with Cassie, alleged that he set his car on fire, and compared him to “a Marvel supervillain.”
