A jury found former New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs not guilty of all charges on Tuesday May 5, 2026, concluding a two-day trial in Dedham, Massachusetts that produced tense cross-examination, a demand for $5.5 million, a judge who had to scold a witness for going off script, and ultimately just over an hour of deliberations before six jurors decided the prosecution had not met its burden of proof.
Diggs, 33, had been charged with felony strangulation or suffocation and misdemeanor assault and battery stemming from an alleged incident at his home on December 2, 2025.
He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in February and did not testify in his own defense. He stood as the verdict was read.
When the words not guilty were delivered on both counts, he hugged his attorneys.
“We have taken these allegations seriously from day one and that’s exactly why we were eager for the facts to come to light through the legal process,” defense attorney Mitch Schuster said in a statement after the verdict. “Professional athletes have a target on their back. When someone sees a uniform and a contract, they see leverage; they see a settlement.”
What The Case Was About
The charges against Diggs centered on a confrontation that his former live-in personal chef, Jamila Adams, known as Mila, alleged took place inside his Dedham home on December 2, 2025.
Adams testified that Diggs came into her room, smacked her with an open hand on her cheek, and then placed her in a chokehold.
She said she was so frightened she urinated in her pants. She flew to New York City that same evening and stayed for a week.
Adams had been working for Diggs as his private chef since February 2025, living in his home.
Their relationship was, by her own admission, complicated, it began as a friendship, then became sexual before she was formally hired to manage his meals, snacks and dietary improvements. She had known him for four and a half years by the time of the alleged assault.
Adams told police she and Diggs had been arguing about money, specifically one month’s pay she said he owed her.
She also testified that she was upset about not being invited on a trip to Miami for Art Basel, where she and Cardi B, Diggs’ girlfriend at the time, had allegedly planned outfits together. The argument escalated, she said, into the physical altercation she described.
She waited two weeks before reporting it. On December 16, she walked into the Dedham Police Station. Patrolman Kenneth Ellis, one of only two witnesses the prosecution called, testified that Adams arrived crying.
He also testified that he documented no injuries on her and was unable to speak with Diggs before filing charges.
The Cross-Examination That Changed The Trial’s Momentum
Defense attorney Sara Silva’s cross-examination of Adams on Tuesday morning was the turning point that most observers cited after the verdict came in.
Silva asked Adams directly whether her lawyer had demanded $5.5 million from Diggs.
Adams declined to answer, citing attorney-client privilege. Earlier in the exchange, Silva established that the demand had started at $19,000 and escalated to $5.5 million.
When Silva asked the question a second time, after the judge stepped in to warn Adams about not answering with her “own narrative,” Adams again declined.
Then, in what the judge immediately intervened to contain, Adams attempted to tell the jury that Diggs had offered her $100,000 to recant her statement.
Judge Jeanmarie Carroll instructed the jury to disregard the comment entirely and warned Adams that if she continued to inject her own narrative, her entire testimony could be stricken from the record.
“This is not an opportunity for you to interject your own narrative,” Carroll told Adams without the jury present.
WBZ legal analyst Jennifer Roman said the $5.5 million refusal was among the most damaging moments for the prosecution. “We had the suggestion by defense counsel that this was a play for money. That her team had demanded $5.5 million from Stefon Diggs, which was one of the questions she chose not to answer, which I think was damaging to her,” Roman said after the verdict.
Adams also struggled to answer questions about messages sent to Diggs and Cardi B, and about phone messages that had been deleted.
She gave Diggs a birthday gift less than 24 hours after the alleged assault. She returned to work for him after flying to New York.
Her last day in his home was December 15, thirteen days after the incident she described as a terrifying physical attack.
What The Defense Showed The Jury
The defense called seven witnesses on Tuesday, every witness it called in the entire trial, all in one day.
The testimony was consistent and specific. Friends and employees who saw Adams in the days after December 2 said they noticed no injuries on her face or neck, no marks, no difficulty swallowing food or drink, and that she did not mention anything about an attack to them.
One witness, identified as Moses, said she saw Adams on December 2 and in the days that followed and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
Another witness, Xia Charles, said she saw no bruising or injuries on Adams on the morning of December 3 and that Adams spent approximately a week with her in New York without once mentioning an assault.
Defense attorney Andrew Kettlewell played dashcam footage of Adams riding in Charles’s car on December 3. No injuries were visible in the footage.
Kettlewell’s closing argument was direct about what the defense believed the case actually was. “Prosecutors have not proved this case because no assault occurred,” he told the jury. “The evidence shows Adams made this accusation as a means of trying to leverage, and humiliate, and to punish Stefon Diggs.”
He asked the jury a rhetorical question that carried the weight of everything the defense had presented. “How much would you bet on the words of Jamila Adams?”
The prosecution asked the jury not to throw away Adams’ testimony just because she was not a “perfect witness.”
Assistant District Attorney Drew Virtue told jurors it was their “sacred duty” to comb through every piece of evidence and give Adams’ account the attention it deserved. The jury deliberated for just over an hour before returning not guilty on both counts.
Who Is Stefon Diggs?
Stefon Diggs is a four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver who spent his NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings, the Buffalo Bills and most recently the New England Patriots.
He was released by New England in March 2026, before the trial, in a move that saved the team $16.8 million in cap space and carried $9.7 million in dead money.
He grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, attended Our Lady of Good Counsel High School and played college football at the University of Maryland.
He was not arrested in connection with the December charges, he was summoned to court for his arraignment in February.
He appeared at the Dedham courthouse each day of the trial in a navy suit, sat quietly through testimony, and did not take the stand.
His legal team maintained from the beginning that the charges were “unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, and were never investigated, because they did not occur” and that the allegations were “the direct result of an employee-employer financial dispute that was not resolved to the employee’s satisfaction.”
The jury agreed. The ordeal is over.
