NEW YORK — Attorneys representing Sean “Diddy” Combs have appealed to a federal court in New York, seeking his immediate release from incarceration and a reversal of his conviction related to prostitution, or alternatively, a reduction of his four-year sentence by the trial judge.
In their filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, Combs’ legal team argued that the sentencing was overly severe. They claimed the federal judge improperly allowed evidence from charges that Combs was acquitted of to influence the severity of the sentence.
The 56-year-old music icon is currently held in a New Jersey federal prison, with a release date set for May 2028. His trial concluded in July, where he was found not guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. However, he was convicted under the Mann Act for transporting individuals across state borders for illicit purposes.
Combs’ lawyers contended that Judge Arun Subramanian acted as if he were an additional juror when he imposed a sentence of four years and two months last October. They criticized the judge for allowing the acquitted charges to factor into the sentencing decision.
The defense highlighted that Combs was found guilty of lesser charges, specifically prostitution offenses that did not involve force, fraud, or coercion. They have requested the appeals court either to acquit Combs, release him immediately, or instruct Judge Subramanian to reconsider and reduce the sentence.
“Typically, individuals convicted of these offenses receive sentences of less than 15 months, even when coercion is part of the charge, which was not the case here,” the legal team asserted.
“The judge defied the jury’s verdict and found Combs ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘forced’ his girlfriends to have sex and led a criminal conspiracy. These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant,” the lawyers wrote.
At sentencing, Subramanian said that when calculating the prison term, he considered Combs’ treatment of two former girlfriends who testified that the Bad Boy Records founder beat them and coerced them into having sex with male sex workers while he watched and filmed the encounters, sometimes masturbating.
At the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” sex with strangers hundreds of times during their decade-long relationship that ended in 2018. Jurors saw video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”
The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym ” Jane,” said she was pressured into sex with male workers during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also could last days.
At sentencing, Subramanian said he “rejects the defense’s attempt to characterize what happened here as merely intimate, consensual experiences, or just a sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll story.”
He added: “You abused the power and control that you had over the lives of women you professed to love dearly. You abused them physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And you used that abuse to get your way, especially when it came to freak-offs and hotel nights.”
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