Sean 'Diddy' Combs asks Second Circuit to toss prostitution conviction over sentencing misstep

MANHATTAN (CN) — Convicted entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs urged a federal appeals court on Thursday morning to vacate his 2025 criminal convictions because of the trial judge’s inclusion of acquitted conduct in crafting Combs’ prison sentence.

“I think it’s clear that, at a minimum, there are serious constitutional concerns with using acquitted conduct,” Combs’ appellate counsel Alexandra Shapiro told a three-judge panel. “And so I think if the court finds that the guideline is ambiguous, it should be interpreted. The exception should be interpreted narrowly in favor of the defendant.”

Following a highly publicized trial in Manhattan federal court last summer, Combs prevailed against top counts of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life, but the New York City jury convicted him of a pair of Mann Act prostitution-related offenses connected to the interstate transportation of prostitutes for the purposes of Combs’ voyeuristic marathon sex parties with hired escorts repeatedly referred to at trial as “freak-offs.”

Formerly known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy, Combs has been serving out his 50-month prison sentence at Fort Dix in New Jersey, having already spent more than a year behind bars in pretrial detention at the MDC Brooklyn federal jail in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Combs’ attorneys argue on appeal before the Second Circuit that the judge in Combs’ trial improperly applied a coercion enhancement to his sentencing based on acquitted conduct, which they say runs afoul of recent guidance by the U.S. Sentencing Commission limiting the inclusion of acquitted conduct in federal sentencings.

“The jury refused to authorize any punishment for coercive sex or conspiracy — because the evidence showed there was none,” Combs wrote in a subsequent appeals filing. “The jury only authorized punishment for ‘prostitution.’ It never authorized a sentence four times the typical sentence for that crime. But the district court imposed one anyway. It ignored the Sentencing Commission’s decision to prohibit the pernicious practice of acquitted-conduct sentencing.”

At the outset of oral arguments Thursday, U.S. Circuit Judge William Nardini quickly asked Combs’ defense lawyers why the panel should abandon prior circuit precedents holding it is constitutional for a sentencing judge to consider acquitted conduct.

“So then my question is, other than preserving your argument for consideration by this court en banc or by the Supreme Court, how is it that this panel could, in your view, overrule precedents of other panels of this court?” the Donald Trump appointee asked.

Nardini noted that an acquittal is not all-encompassing conclusion of fact.

“There is this thing we say: Acquittals don’t constitute factual findings of anything,’ right? They are determinations that, somewhere within the elements of an offense, the jury found something not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but they didn’t make an affirmative finding [of] anything else.”

In response to Combs’ appeal, the Department of Justice asserts Subramanian’s discretion on the overlapping offense conduct was consistent with Sentencing Commission’s holding that presiding trial judges “are in the best position to make the determinations based on the individual facts of each case.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik argued on Thursday that Subramanian had judiciously weighed the acquitted conduct in the context of the offense conduct in imposing the 50-month prison sentence.

“Much of the conduct that the district court focused on in imposing the sentence was not acquitted conduct at all,” Slavik said. “In fact, it was admitted conduct, the extreme physical violence that took place in the context of these freak offs.”

Nardini was joined on the panel by fellow Trump-appointed Judge M. Miller Baker of the United States Court of International Trade, as well as U.S. Circuit Judge Sarah Merriam, a Joe Biden appointee.

The three-judge panel did not rule from the bench on the appeal Thursday, but Nardini thanked both sides for their briefing on what he called “an exceptionally difficult case.”

“This is a question of first impression, not only for this court, but apparently for any federal court of appeals in the country,” he said at the conclusion of the two-hour hearing.

The 50-month sentence ordered was less than half of the 135 months prosecutors were seeking, but greater than the punishment of time served that Combs’ defense had requested.

Combs’ lawyers noted that Mann Act defendants with minimal criminal histories typically receive a median sentence of 12 months and an average of less than 15 months.

Prior to his sentencing in October 2025, Combs mounted posttrial motions for acquittal or retrial, framing the so-called “freak off” sexual escapades as just self-produced amateur pornography with consensual partners for his own voyeuristic gratification, rather than illegally flying in male prostitutes across state lines for hotel sex marathons with his girlfriends.

On appeal, Combs argues that the trial jurors unanimously rejected “the government’s sordid tale of coercion and racketeering.”

Formerly known as Puff Daddy, Combs worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding his own record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, in 1993. He came to national prominence in the early 1990s, producing hit debut albums for rapper The Notorious B.I.G. and R&B singer Mary J. Blige.

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