Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs, who has been serving a 50-month prison sentence for prostitution-related charges handed down last October, appeared before a federal court in New York City on Thursday to appeal his conviction.
Combs’s attorneys requested his immediate release from prison and for his conviction under the Mann Act, a federal law criminalizing transportation to engage in prostitution, to be overturned. The music mogul, who has been serving his prison sentence at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution in New Jersey, did not attend Thursday’s hearing.
His legal team claims that the judge imposed an overly harsh sentence.
“This case presents an important issue about a respect for jury verdicts and public confidence in our criminal justice system,” defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro told a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan.
Shapiro said in court filings that U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who oversaw last summer’s high-profile trial, should not have considered evidence involving fraud and sexual coercion in his sentencing because those allegations were rejected by a jury last year.
“Defendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved,” Combs’s lawyers argued in court papers. “But Combs got a sentence more than three times as long, despite the acquittals. He sits in prison today, serving a 50-month sentence, because the district judge acted as a thirteenth juror.”
Combs’s lawyers also argued in court filings that the recordings Combs orchestrated with girlfriends and male sex workers were “highly choreographed sexual performances” that were basically “amateur pornography,” and should be protected by the First Amendment.
In court papers, prosecutor Christy Slavik defended Subramanian’s decision to consider evidence of Combs’s threats and abuse toward former girlfriends — even though he was acquitted of sex trafficking charges — because his conduct was still relevant to the prostitution counts of which he was convicted.
“According to Combs, the District Court should have closed its eyes to how he carried out his Mann Act offenses and abused his victims,” Slavik wrote.
During last year’s seven-week trial, federal prosecutors accused Combs of leading a criminal enterprise that “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct,” according to the indictment. Combs pleaded not guilty and denied all of the allegations against him.
Last July, a jury found Combs guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution related to his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura and a victim who testified under the pseudonym “Jane.” The jury also acquitted Combs of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking that could have seen him sentenced to life in prison.
Combs says sorry to his family during his sentencing hearing after being convicted in New York City in October 2025.
(Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)
Combs faced a maximum of 20 years in prison for the two prostitution-related charges. Federal prosecutors asked for a sentence of more than 11 years in prison and to impose the maximum fine of $500,000. The defense sought a sentence of no more than 14 months in prison.
Last October, in a Manhattan federal court, Subramanian ultimately handed down a sentence of 50 months — four years and two months — in prison. The judge also imposed a $500,000 fine and ordered five years of supervised release.
The judge told the court at the time that a substantial sentence was needed “to send a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence against women is met with real accountability.”
Subramanian said at the sentencing that 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.”
The judge told Combs directly, “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.”
The federal appeals court could either uphold Combs’s conviction, order a new sentencing hearing or completely overturn the case.
Combs’s release date has fluctuated in recent months. It was recently moved from April 25, 2028, to April 15 of that year, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website. He was originally scheduled for release in June, then May, of that year.
