Sean "Diddy" Combs was denied an acquittal and new trial for his prostitution charges. Photo / Getty Images
Sean "Diddy" Combs was denied an acquittal and new trial for his prostitution charges. Photo / Getty Images
Sean “Diddy” Combs was denied an acquittal and new trial on Tuesday (US time).
The rapper, 55, is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday in Manhattan, New York, after his conviction on two counts of arranging interstate travel for people engaged in prostitution, but he was acquitted of moreserious offences of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which could have resulted in a life sentence.
As a result, Combs’ team asked the judge for a new trial based only on the prostitution charges.
They claimed he had been unjustly charged under the Mann Act for consensual sexual activity between adults.
However, the acquittal and new trial request was denied.
According to the New York Times, United States District Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in new court documents: “The government at trial presented overwhelming evidence of Combs’s guilt under the Mann Act on many occasions with respect to both Ventura and Jane.”
Cassie Ventura testified against Combs, detailing years of alleged abuse and forced participation in "freak offs". Photo / Getty Images
“The government proved its case many times over. That by itself might be enough to dispose of Combs’s challenge.”
Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and a woman who used the pseudonym Jane both testified against the rapper during his eight-week trial.
The I’ll Be Missing You hitmaker – who has been held in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre for more than a year, after his September 2024 arrest – faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the two counts he was convicted on, but defence attorneys have asked the judge to sentence him to no more than 14 months in prison.
With good behaviour, that would mean Combs’ immediate release.
However, on Tuesday, the prosecution asked the judge to sentence Combs to at least 11 years and three months in prison.
When testifying against Combs, Ventura claimed she had been forced to participate in so-called “freak offs”, and alleged she had endured sexual and physical abuse during their relationship.
She has written a three-page victim impact statement before her former lover’s sentencing later this week, and she urged the judge to consider a punishment that reflects “the reality of the evidence and my lived experience as a victim”.
She wrote in a letter submitted to the court on Monday and obtained by Rolling Stone: “For four days in May, while nine months pregnant with my son, I testified in front of a packed courtroom about the most traumatic and horrifying chapter in my life.
“I testified that from age 19, Sean Combs used violence, threats, substances, and control over my career to trap me in over a decade of abuse. He groomed me into performing repeated sex acts with hired male sex workers during multi-day ‘freak offs,’ which occurred nearly weekly.
“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. Sex acts became my fulltime job, used as the only way to stay in his good graces.”
