Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seeks immediate release from…
Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs urged a federal appeals court in New York late Tuesday to order his immediate release from prison and reverse his conviction on prostitution-related costs or direct his trial decide to lighten his four-year sentence.
The legal professionals said in a submitting with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was handled harshly at sentencing by a federal decide who let evidence surrounding costs he was acquitted of unjustly affect the punishment.
Combs, 56, incarcerated at a federal prison in New Jersey and scheduled for release in May 2028, was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking at a trial that ended in July. Combs was convicted under the Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state traces for any inappropriate crime.
Lawyers for Combs said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” in October when he sentenced Combs to 4 years and two months in prison. They said he erred by letting evidence surrounding the acquitted costs affect the sentence he imposed.
Sean “Diddy” Combs with ex Cassie Ventura in 2016. She testified earlier this yr that the mogul ordered her to have “disgusting” intercourse with strangers tons of of instances during their decade-long relationship that ended in 2018. AFP via Getty Images
They famous that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn’t require drive, fraud, or coercion. They requested the appeals court, which has not yet heard oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his immediate release from prison 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 legal professionals 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 legal professionals wrote.
At sentencing, Subramanian said that when calculating the prison time period, he thought-about Combs’ treatment of two former girlfriends who testified that the Bad Boy Records founder beat them and coerced them into having intercourse with male intercourse employees while he watched and filmed the encounters, sometimes masturbating.
A courtroom sketch of Sean “Diddy” Combs as he listens to lawyer Alexandra Shapiro argue during a listening to over his bid to overturn his conviction on Sept. 25, 2025. REUTERS
At the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” intercourse with strangers tons of of instances during their decade-long relationship that ended in 2018. Jurors noticed video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles lodge hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”
The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” said she was pressured into intercourse with male employees during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled inappropriate encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also may 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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