Stop? No Diddy! The lawyers of Sean Combs appealed to a New York appeals court late Tuesday (Dec.23) to order his immediate release from prison. The latest appeal also asked the court to overturn her conviction on prostitution-related charges or order the judge who tried her to reduce her four-year sentence.
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Diddy Takes Aim of Court of Appeals Judge
Diddy’s lawyers said in a filing with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that his judge, Arun Subramanianhe treated him badly when he was sentenced. The documents say Judge Subramanian improperly allowed evidence related to his acquittals to influence the sentence.
Sean Combs is being held at a state prison in New Jersey and is scheduled to be released in May 2028. He was acquitted of conspiracy to traffic and sex trafficking in a trial that ended in July. The judge sentenced Diddy under the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines for any sex crime.
Combs’ attorneys said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like the “thirteenth judge” in October when he sentenced Combs to four years and two months in prison. They said the judge slipped by allowing the evidence related to the charges to be withdrawn to influence the sentence he handed down.
What does Combs want?
Additionally, the attorneys noted that Diddy was convicted of two lesser charges, prostitution charges that did not require force, fraud, or coercion. They asked the appeals court, which has yet to hear oral arguments, to exonerate Sean Combs, order his immediate release from prison or direct Subramanian to commute his sentence.
“Defendants are often sentenced to less than 15 months for these crimes — even if there is a coercion, which the judge did not find here,” the attorneys wrote.
In addition, the lawyers wrote: “The jury overruled the jury’s decision and found that Combs was ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘coerced’ his girlfriends into having sex and led to the creation of a criminal conspiracy. This finding by the court overturned the verdict and resulted in the highest sentence ever received by any similar defendant.”
What did Judge Arun Subramanian say when he handed down the sentence?
When handing down the sentence, Judge Subramanian said that when calculating the prison sentence, he took into account the way Diddy treated his two ex-girlfriends. The women revealed that the founder of Bad Boy Records beat them and forced them to sleep with men who sold sex while watching and filming the shows, sometimes beating them with their penises.
At trial, ex-girlfriend Cassie testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” sex with strangers hundreds of times during their ten-year relationship that ended in 2018. Jurors saw a video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after a days-long “chaos”.
The second ex-girlfriend testified under the pseudonym Jane. She said she was pressured to have sex with male employees during what Combs called “hotel nights.” That night includes drug-fueled sex encounters from 2021 to 2024 that can last for days.
While handing down the sentence, Subramanian said “he rejects the defense’s attempt to portray what happened here as an intimate, consensual experience, or just a sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll affair.” He added:
“He abused the power and control you had over the lives of the women you said he loved the most. He abused them physically, emotionally, and mentally. And he used that abuse to get his way, especially when it came to misconduct and hotel nights.”
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Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister contributed to this report for AP Newsroom.
What do you think Roomies?
