At 31, Combs oversees a music, fashion and restaurant empire and is personally worth an estimated $400 million. His beginnings, however, were humble. He was just 3 years old when his street-hustler father was gunned down. His mother, Janice, raised Combs and his sister in Harlem. When Combs was 12, the family moved to Mount Vernon, N.Y., and he enrolled at an all-boys Catholic prep school.

As a young football player there, according to several published reports, he earned the nickname "Puffy" by trying to look huskier than he actually was.

He went on to prestigious Howard University but dropped out after a year to take an internship at Uptown/MCA records. Undeterred, he founded his own label, Bad Boy Records, and built it into a force in hip-hop, signing artists such as Mary J. Blige and Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace.

His success was not without problems. A stampede at a charity basketball game he promoted killed nine people in 1991, and his close friend Wallace was murdered in 1997. Combs was arrested for weapons possession and robbery in 1995, and only months before the shooting, he pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment in connection with an alleged attack on a record company executive.

He fathered two children, Justin and Christian, but has never married. At the time of the shooting, he was dating actress-singer Jennifer Lopez.

Born in Belize and raised by his mother and grandmother in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, Barrow began rapping at age 13. His often-violent lyrics reflected a real life of gangs and guns. He was arrested twice in 1992 for joining in mob robberies of other teens and spent a year in juvenile hall.

His legal troubles continued even after he was discovered by two record executives while freestyling at a neighborhood barbershop. In May 2000, a pick-up basketball opponent sued him for $6 million, claiming the rapper assaulted him during a game. Later in the year, according to sonicnet.com, he left the stage during a freestyling contest to pick a fight with a man who had been heckling him. During jury selection, he was involved in a car accident and was charged with driving without a license.

His attorney, Murray Richman, maintains his client's innocence.

"He is guilty ... guilty of being poor, guilty of wanting a better life," Richman told jurors.

He is a convicted felon and, according to the Los Angeles Times, a suspect in the Atlanta murder of a record company employee. His attorney, Michael Bachner, denied that report.

In 1999, Fenderson, a 42-year-old divorced father of two, was working part-time as Combs' weekend chauffeur to supplement the income he made driving an investment banker and his family during the week. After the shooting, he lost both jobs and filed a $3 million suit against Combs.

The daughter of a computer specialist and a teacher, Lopez was raised in the Bronx. Her debut album, On the Six, was named for the subway line she rode to auditions and performance lessons in Manhattan. She got her start in show business as a "fly girl," a dancer on the FOX variety series "In Living Color" and rose to stardom in Selena, the movie biography of the slain Tejana singer.

She began a very public romance with Combs in 1998, co-hosting parties at his Hamptons home and accompanying him to various awards. On Valentine's Day, during the second month of the trial, the couple announced their romance was over.

He is known for being just as tough in the courtroom. Defense lawyers describe him as "a pit bull," intense, aggressive and focused on winning. His arguments are dramatic, punctuated by shouts, whispers and a constantly jabbing index finger. After one such diatribe, Combs' attorney Benjamin Brafman reminded the prosecutor that he was in court, "not in a revival meeting."

Bogdanos prosecuted another high-profile defendant, so-called "Baby-Faced Butcher" Christopher Vasquez, a 16-year-old convicted of manslaughter in the brutal 1997 Central Park stabbing of a real estate broker.

Early in his career, Brafman did a stint in the Manhattan district attorney's office, prosecuting organized and white-collar crime cases, but he found his calling in defense work. Some attribute his success to the rapport he develops with jurors. During jury selection in the Combs' case, he had the pool laughing along with his self-deprecating humor.

He sometimes sports a white baseball cap with "Puff Daddy Defense" stitched in black to the courthouse. "Black and white," he says, "just like the case."

Cochran — a former Court TV anchor — continued this work in New York, representing police torture victim Abner Louima and the family of shooting victim Amadou Diallo. The bread and butter of his firm, however, is small-time civil suits, and Cochran hawks those services in television ads that include a toll-free number.