Lawyers Sean “Diddy” Combs have asked the New York federal appeals court to order the immediate release of the rapper and the cancellation of his sentence for prostitution-related charges or order the trial judge to reduce his sentence by four years.
The lawyers said in a filing with the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was “treated harshly” during sentencing by a federal judge who allowed evidence surrounding the charges on which he was acquitted to unfairly influence his sentence.
Combs, 56, imprisoned in a federal prison in New Jersey and scheduled for release in May 2028, was acquitted of conspiracy charges for organized crime and sex trafficking in a trial that ended in July. He was also convicted under the Mann’s lawwhich prohibits the transportation of people across state lines for any sexual offense.
Combs’ lawyers said Judge Arun Subramanian acted as the “thirteenth juror” in October in sentencing him to four years and two months in prison. Furthermore, they claimed that he made a mistake in allowing evidence related to acquitted charges influence the sentence he imposed.
They also noted that their client was convicted of two minor charges: prostitution crimes that did not require force, fraud, or coercion. So they asked the appeals court, which has yet to hear oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his immediate release or order Subramanian to reduce his sentence. “Defendants typically receive sentences of less than 15 months for these crimes, even when duress is involved, which the jury did not find in this case,” the attorneys wrote.
The judge challenged the jury’s verdict and stated that The rapper had “constrained, exploited and forced” his girlfriends have sexual relations and that he had led a criminal conspiracy. These legal findings invalidated the verdict and resulted in the highest sentence ever imposed on a vaguely similar defendant.
During sentencing, Subramanian said that when calculating the prison term, he took into account the Combs’ treatment of two ex-girlfriends who testified that he beat them and forced them to have sex with male prostitutes while he observed and recorded the encounters, sometimes while masturbating.
At the trial, his ex-girlfriend Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that the rapper 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 hitting her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one of these “confrontations” which lasted several days. The second ex-girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym Jane, said she was pressured to have sex with male workers during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sex between 2021 and 2024 that could also last several days.
At sentencing, Subramanian said he “rejects the defense’s attempt to characterize what happened here as mere intimate and consensual experiences, or simply a story of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll“. “You abused the power and control you had over the lives of the women you said you loved deeply. You abused them physically, emotionally and psychologically. And you used this abuse to achieve your ends, especially when it involved casual encounters and hotel nights,” he told the accused.
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