Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team urged an appeals court Thursday to overturn his conviction and 50-month prison sentence on prostitution-related charges, arguing that the judge who presided over his trial last summer was wrong to consider the hip-hop mogul’s abusive conduct.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik, one of the prosecutors behind the case, insisted that Combs’ four-year, two-month prison term was appropriate, and below federal sentencing guidelines.
The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan did not immediately rule, as is standard.
Combs was convicted last July on two counts of interstate prostitution but acquitted on the more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The federal prosecutors who brought the case had accused the hip-hop mogul of orchestrating a criminal scheme to force women to participate in drug-fueled, marathon sexual encounters known as “freak offs.”
He pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied wrongdoing.
His lawyers have argued that his sexual encounters were consensual and blasted the judge for acting like “a thirteenth juror” during the blockbuster trial, which spanned eight weeks and featured graphic testimony from two of Combs' ex-girlfriends.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian “defied the jury’s verdict” when he found that Combs had “coerced, exploited and forced” his girlfriends to have sex, the defense lawyers wrote in an 84-page court filing in late December. “These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant,” the lawyers wrote.
It was not clear whether Combs’ defense team objected to particular comments from Subramanian. In remarks at Combs’ sentencing, Subramanian said he had to consider “all” of the defendant’s history.
“You abused the power and control with women you professed to love,” the judge said. “You abused them physically, emotionally and psychologically.”
Slavik, speaking to the appeals panel Thursday, said that “even if Judge Subramanian made an error in his application and interpretation of the acquitted conduct guideline — which we don’t think he did — but even if he did, that error would be harmless.”
Combs’ lawyers have asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to acquit him, order his immediate release from prison or direct Subramanian to reduce his sentence. Combs is incarcerated at the low-security Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey and scheduled for release on April 15, 2028, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
In an 83-page brief filed in February, the U.S. attorneys who charged Combs rejected his lawyers’ assertion that Subramanian was wrong to consider his “coercion and other acquitted conduct.” The prosecutors argued it was appropriate to account for the ways Combs violated the Mann Act, a federal law that bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
“According to Combs, the District Court should have closed its eyes to how he carried out his Mann Act offenses and abused his victims — violently beating them, threatening them, lying to them, and plying them with drugs,” they wrote. “To do otherwise, Combs says, violated the Constitution and was ‘unfair and unjust.’ Combs is wrong.”
Alexandra Shapiro, arguing for the defense Thursday, said in part: “This sentence was the highest sentence ever imposed for a Mann Act defendant, sentenced under the same base offense level and criminal history category.”
