Federal prosecutors argued in a new brief that Sean “Diddy” Combs should be sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison on Friday for his role transporting male prostitutes across state lines for drug-fueled sex marathons with ex-girlfriends that Combs directed and filmed.
“Punishment for his crimes of conviction must take into account the manner in which he committed them,” prosecutors wrote in their 164-page memo filed Monday right at the midnight deadline. “His crimes of conviction are serious and have warranted sentences over ten years in multiple cases for defendants who, like Sean Combs, engaged in violence and put others in fear.”
In accompanying victim impact statements, Combs’ former girlfriends, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym “Jane,” asked the judge to carefully consider their harrowing trial testimony. On the witness stand, the women detailed how they felt coerced to participate in the highly orchestrated threesomes with escorts, known as freak-offs. Ventura wrote in her new letter that Combs groomed, manipulated, and threatened her during their decade-long relationship. She said he also regularly beat her, punched her, stomped on her face, and threw her body to the ground.
“I was forced into lingerie and heels, told exactly how to look, and plied with drugs and alcohol so he could control me like a puppet. These events were degrading and disgusting, leaving me with infections, illnesses, and days of physical and emotional exhaustion before he demanded it all again,” she wrote. “While the jury did not seem to understand or believe that I engaged in freak-offs because of the force and coercion the defendant used against me, I know that is the truth, and his sentence should reflect the reality of the evidence and my lived experience as a victim.”
Jane told the judge that Combs “trapped” her “in a world of terror, abuse, humiliation, and coercive control.” She said her relationship with Combs left her in a state of “constant fear.” The “years of abuse have rewired my brain. Even today, I feel trapped in the mental and emotional patterns that he created. I live with chronic and severe PTSD, depression, and crippling anxiety. I suffer from deeply intrusive thoughts, derealization, panic attacks, night terrors, and insomnia,” she said, asking for a sentence “that reflects the full measure of harm that he has caused: the years of coercion, financial abuse, humiliation, physical and sexual violence, and the profound trauma that he has inflicted as a result.”
Combs, 55, has already spent more than a year in federal custody after his September 2024 arrest in the felony case. On July 2, a jury convicted him of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Jurors rejected a trio of more serious charges, finding that prosecutors failed to prove Combs ran a racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficked two former girlfriends. The acquittals meant Combs was no longer facing the possibility of life in prison. At the time, the mogul pumped his fist and dropped to his knees as he celebrated in the courtroom.
For his two convictions, federal probation officials have recommended a sentence of 70 to 87 months in prison, or roughly six to seven years. Combs’ defense has asked for no more than 14 months, which likely would see him released by the end of the year, if not immediately. (Federal prisoners sentenced to more than 12 months can earn “good time credit” that can shave up to 15 percent off their sentences.)
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In their dueling, 182-page sentencing brief filed last week, Combs’ defense laid out his life story in an apparent bid for mercy, saying Combs struggled as a child after his father was murdered when he was only three years old. They argued the loss caused a “profound form of trauma” that set the stage for the substance abuse issues Combs wrestled with during his admittedly violent relationships with the two ex-girlfriends involved in his convictions.
“For decades, Mr. Combs struggled with serious substance abuse issues, anger and anxiety, and other flaws that he did not properly or professionally address until his incarceration last year,” the filing stated. “Like every addict, his behavior while on painkillers was erratic and unpredictable, and often the reason behind any assaults discussed at the trial.”
His lawyers also attached more than 75 letters of support from family and friends, including Combs’ mother Janice; his sister Keisha; his three teen daughters, Chance, Jessie and D’Lila; Dana Tran, the mother of Comb’s two-year-old daughter, Love; and Combs’ former girlfriend Yung Miami, the City Girls rapper born Caresha Brownlee.
Combs’ two prostitution charges, violations of a century-old law known as the Mann Act, each carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. Back in July, before the probation department weighed in with its recommendation, prosecutors gave a preliminary estimate that Combs’ sentencing guidelines range was around four to five years behind bars.
In Combs’ sentencing memo filed Sept. 22, his high-powered defense team, comprised of Mark Agnifilo, Teny Geragos, Alexandra Shapiro, Brian Steel, Nicole Westmoreland, Xavier Donaldson, and Anna Estevao, argued that a review of more than 60 other Mann Act cases determined the average sentence was 14.9 months of incarceration. Combs and his lawyers claimed it would be improper for the court, during its sentencing deliberation, to consider evidence from his trial that they argue would not have come in without the government’s pursuit of the failed racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
“It would be unlawful, and a perversion of justice, for the court to sentence him as if the jury had convicted him of sex trafficking and RICO, or to increase his sentence based on the court’s own findings about force or coercion or racketeering,” they wrote. “What is the point of a jury trial if the defendant can be acquitted, but then sentenced as if he had been convicted? Doing so nullifies the entire purpose of a jury.”
Federal judges aren’t required to follow guidelines. In the Southern District of New York, judges stuck to guideline ranges 34.5 percent of the time in the last fiscal year, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian will have wide latitude at Combs’ Oct. 3 sentencing. It’s not clear how he will rule, but on the day of the verdict, when many speculated that Combs’ acquittal on his top charges would lead to his immediate release on bail pending sentencing, Judge Subramanian took a hard line. He denied the release on the basis that Combs’ defense voluntarily admitted during the trial that Combs was violent with Ventura and Jane. In his closing argument, Agnifilo explicitly told jurors that the defense wasn’t challenging the women’s claims of domestic violence.
“In terms of owning, just as a matter of personal responsibility … owning the domestic violence, we own it. It happened,” Agnifilo told the panel in his final address on June 27. “If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn’t all be here having a trial, because he would have pled guilty — because he did that.”
Rejecting the defense bid for immediate bail on July 2, Subramanian pointed to the disturbing video of Combs’ 2016 assault of Ventura inside Los Angeles’ now-shuttered InterContinental Hotel before sending a seemingly stunned Combs back into custody. Taking a serious tone, Subramanian also noted the video wasn’t the only violence acknowledged by the defense. He pointed to the days Ventura spent at the London Hotel in Los Angeles to recover after Combs allegedly stomped on her face in a vehicle. (“Obviously, there was some physical event, and she had injuries, okay? So she goes to the hotel as much for her own good as anyone else’s,” Agnifilo told jurors about the fight that landed Ventura at the London Hotel.)
“This type of violence, which happens behind closed doors in personal relationships, sparked by unpredictable bouts of anger, is impossible to police with conditions,” the judge said on July 2. Turning to the June 2024 incident at Jane’s house, where, according to Agnifilo, Combs admittedly kicked Jane and restrained her “around the neck” during a blowout fight, the judge called out the timing. He noted the incident came after Combs’ homes were raided by federal authorities in March 2024. “At a time when [Combs] should have known that he needed to stay clean,” the mogul instead showed “a disregard for the rule of law and the propensity for violence,” the judge said.
At a separate hearing last week, Combs’ defense argued a motion seeking to vacate the jury’s convictions or, in the alternative, a new trial on the two prostitution counts that would take place without the same jury hearing all the evidence related to the acquitted charges. Judge Subramanian listened but did not immediately issue a ruling.
From Rolling Stone US
