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In a high-profile legal battle, attorneys for hip-hop entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs have appealed to a federal court in New York, seeking his immediate release from incarceration. They are calling for either a reversal of his conviction on charges linked to prostitution or a reduction in his current four-year prison sentence.
The legal team presented their case to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, arguing that Combs faced an unduly harsh sentence from a federal judge. They claim the judge improperly considered evidence related to charges from which Combs had been acquitted, influencing the severity of his punishment.
Combs, aged 56, is presently serving his sentence at a federal facility in New Jersey, with a release date set for May 2028. Although cleared of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges in a trial concluded in July, he was found guilty of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits the interstate transport of individuals for unlawful sexual activities.
The defense criticized Judge Arun Subramanian for allegedly acting beyond his role during the October sentencing, accusing him of allowing acquitted charges to impact the decision significantly. Combs’ legal representatives argue this overstepping led to an unjust sentence.
Highlighting that Combs was only convicted of two minor offenses, which did not involve force, fraud, or coercion, they urged the court to either overturn his conviction, facilitate his immediate release, or mandate a sentence reduction. The appeals court has yet to schedule oral arguments for this case.
“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 lawyers wrote.
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“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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