Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs are asking a federal appeals court to order his immediate release from prison and overturn his prostitution-related convictions, arguing that the trial judge improperly punished him for crimes a jury rejected.
In a late Tuesday filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, Combs’s attorneys said the 56-year-old music executive was treated unfairly at sentencing. They contend that U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian allowed evidence tied to charges on which Combs was acquitted to influence the four-year, two-month prison term he imposed in October.
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Combs is currently incarcerated at a federal prison in New Jersey and is scheduled for release in May 2028. His trial concluded in July, when a jury acquitted him of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges. However, jurors convicted him under the Mann Act, a federal law that prohibits transporting people across state lines for prostitution or other sexual offenses.
In their appeal, Combs’ lawyers argued that Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” by effectively overruling the jury’s conclusions. They emphasized that Combs was convicted only of prostitution-related offenses that did not require proof of force, fraud, or coercion.
“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. They further argued that the judge relied on findings that went beyond the verdict. “The judge defied the jury’s verdict and found Combs ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘forced’ his girlfriends to have sex and led a criminal conspiracy,” the filing said.
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“These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant.” At sentencing, Subramanian said he considered testimony from two former girlfriends who accused the Bad Boy Records founder of physical abuse and sexual coercion. Both women testified that Combs pressured them into having sex with male sex workers while he watched and filmed the encounters.
One former girlfriend, singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, told jurors that Combs ordered her to engage in what she described as “disgusting” sexual acts with strangers hundreds of times during their decade-long relationship. Jurors were shown video footage of Combs dragging and beating Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway following one such multiday “freak-off.”
The second woman, identified in court only as “Jane,” testified that she felt pressured into sex with male workers during drug-fueled encounters Combs referred to as “hotel nights” between 2021 and 2024. Subramanian rejected the defense’s attempt to frame the conduct as consensual. “I reject 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 said.
Addressing Combs directly, the judge 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.” The appeals court has not yet scheduled oral arguments or ruled on the request for Combs’ release.
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