Why Cassie’s $20 Million Settlement Didn’t Undermine Her Testimony

Can you break down the fundamental differences between a civil lawsuit and a criminal investigation, especially in cases of sexual assault?

So, conceptually, the criminal justice process is the government satisfying its obligation to secure a safe, law-abiding environment for the people that it governs. So the state brings a criminal action and the state decides—and when I say state, I mean, often, it is actually a state, like the State of New York, State of California, but could also be the federal government as the state. 

But the government brings an action and decides what remedy to pursue. Usually, that remedy is going to be to punish the offender with a loss of liberty, but they could also seek restitution. The judge decides the punishment if the person is convicted of committing that crime.

A civil lawsuit is brought by a private individual against another private individual or entity. You could bring a suit against a public entity in some circumstances as well, but it's the action itself. The government is not necessarily involved, unless the government is the plaintiff or the defendant. In that case, individuals can sue each other and that is to get usually monetary redress for being wronged by the other individual or entity. 

And so that's the civil suit here was saying: You committed these acts of battery, rape, abuse, physical, and psychological abuse, and, therefore, I want monetary compensation. Whereas, in this case, the federal government is saying you committed criminal acts that are morally wrong, and you need to be punished by the state, by the government. And so that's the difference.

What does it mean legally when someone settles a civil case out of court, like Cassie  did?

So, obviously, she went, spoke to a lawyer, the lawyer filed the lawsuit, and Combs had his lawyer, and they looked at this lawsuit and made a decision, rather than to go to trial, that they would offer a certain amount and settle. They probably offered a certain amount. There's probably some back-and-forth negotiations, and then they agreed to an amount of money to resolve the lawsuit.

So with that settlement, does that have any bearing on a parallel on future criminal case?

No. They're completely separate.

How do the standards of proof differ between civil and criminal cases?

The plaintiff in the civil case has a burden, but their burden is what's called by preponderance of the evidence. So just more likely than not. If you think about, like, 50/50, it has to be 51 percent. There has to be just that the one side, if you think about the scales of justice, to just tip a little bit more right than the other, and that's the burden. 

In a criminal case, the government has the burden beyond a reasonable doubt, which is much higher than just a preponderance of the evidence. 

So if someone wins a civil case, it has no  precedential effect on a criminal case. If someone wins a criminal case, then sometimes it does have an impact. You can sort of bring in the evidence and say, you know, this person was convicted of these crimes. But for a civil case, it doesn't matter. It doesn't help the prosecutor at all with their burden.

How might the difference the different standards of proof influence a survivor's choice or decision to pursue one over the other?

A victim might decide to go to the authorities and say, “This person injured me. I want to file a criminal complaint.” But then it's up to the prosecutor what to do with that. 

Whereas in a civil case, if you go to a lawyer and you say, “This person did this to me,” you can hire a lawyer to file suit for you, and you're in charge of that case—you're the client. You tell the lawyer how you want the case to proceed: if you want to testify, if you don't want to testify, if you want to settle, if you don't want to settle. 

With the criminal case, it's the prosecutor that's calling the shots. They want to be responsive to their victim, and they don't want to do things to re-traumatize their victim. 

Does settling civilly make someone less credible in your opinion?

I don't think it's my opinion that matters. In other words, the question is whether it's going to make them less credible in the eyes of the jury, right? 

One argument that defense attorneys often make is that there's a motive to lie and exaggerate if you're looking to get a civil settlement. You want to make the abuse as extreme as possible to make more money.

Now, in this case, there's video evidence that she was beaten up by Combs. So it's a little bit hard to make the argument that she's making this whole thing up. There's very clear, compelling physical evidence as well about people seeing her being abused, and things thrown at her, and with her black and blue. They're not arguing that she's completely making this up. They might be trying to argue that she is exaggerating her injuries, although, again, there was evidence of real injuries. 

I would be surprised if jurors will feel that she is lying about what happened to her because she wanted a civil settlement when they see the evidence. 

What kind of emotional, legal, or societal barriers might discourage survivors from going the criminal route and instead going the civil route?

So if you contact a lawyer, as opposed to law enforcement, a private civil lawyer may say there was a crime here—you should also contact the police about this. But the lawyer can offer to bring the lawsuit. So sometimes it just depends on what avenue somebody advised you to go down.

Sometimes law enforcement are not as trauma-responsive as they should be. I think that it's gotten better, but when it comes to sexual violence, police officers don't have the training to be responsive to people who have experienced trauma and are thinking like a detective trying to put together evidence and want a straight-line narrative. 

A victim who has experienced trauma might not remember certain details, but will remember other things in very detailed form, and won't tell the story in a chronological, methodical way. And law enforcement, although getting more training around being trauma-responsive, have not always been able to meet those emotional needs of victims of domestic abuse and sexual abuse. 

With all of this, I’m curious—is there a right or wrong way to go? Whether you decide to go civil or criminal?

It’s not an either or, right? There are different functions to this civil system and the criminal system. 

If you've endured abuse by someone who has money that can pay for that abuser, there's no reason why you shouldn't feel that you can pursue that route. But it's very different than bringing them to justice in a criminal court. But the two are not mutually exclusive.

They want to show that she's a biased witness because she has a stake in the game. 

Even though the suit was already settled in November 2023?

Right. She doesn't stand to gain monetarily from this criminal case at this moment. But the argument is, well, she wanted to gain from her civil case, so she had to tell a certain story, and now she has to stick to that story. It’s not a very strong argument for the defense, because there's lots to corroborate that she was actually abused. I don't see the civil settlement as being a reason why the jury would acquit here.