Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs urged a federal appeals courtroom in New York late Tuesday to order his instant launch from jail and reverse his conviction on prostitution-related costs or direct his trial choose to lighten his four-year sentence.
The attorneys stated in a submitting with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was handled harshly at sentencing by a federal choose who let proof surrounding costs he was acquitted of unjustly affect the punishment.
Combs, 56, incarcerated at a federal jail in New Jersey and scheduled for launch in May 2028, was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking at a trial that resulted in July. Combs was convicted below the Mann Act, which bans transporting individuals throughout state traces for any sexual crime.
Lawyers for Combs stated Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” in October when he sentenced Combs to 4 years and two months in jail. They stated he erred by letting proof surrounding the acquitted costs affect the sentence he imposed.
They famous that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn’t require drive, fraud, or coercion. They requested the appeals courtroom, which has not but heard oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his instant launch from jail or direct Subramanian to cut back his sentence.
“Defendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved,” the attorneys wrote.
“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 attorneys wrote.
At sentencing, Subramanian stated that when calculating the jail time period, he thought-about Combs’ remedy of two former girlfriends who testified that the Bad Boy Records founder beat them and coerced them into having intercourse with male intercourse staff whereas he watched and filmed the encounters, generally masturbating.
At the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” intercourse with strangers a whole lot of instances throughout their decade-long relationship that resulted in 2018. Jurors noticed video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles resort hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”
The second former girlfriend, who testified below the pseudonym “ Jane,” stated she was pressured into intercourse with male staff throughout what Combs known as “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that additionally might final days.
At sentencing, Subramanian stated 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.”
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.