Nearly three months after he was found guilty on prostitution charges, Sean Combs is scheduled to appear in a Manhattan courthouse on Thursday for his lawyers’ final effort to upend the conviction ahead of his sentencing.
Mr. Combs, who has been held in a Brooklyn jail for more than a year, was convicted in July on two counts of transporting people across state lines for the purposes of prostitution — charges related to voyeuristic sex marathons involving male escorts and two of his former girlfriends. The jury acquitted him of sex trafficking the women and running a racketeering conspiracy, the most serious charges in the case.
Shortly after the jury’s verdict, Mr. Combs’s team of lawyers mounted an effort to persuade a judge to vacate the verdict and acquit the music mogul, or order a new trial altogether that would be limited to the charges on which he was convicted.
They have argued that the case against Mr. Combs was an unjust use of the Mann Act, the federal law that underlies the conviction, to prosecute consensual sex between adults.
“The relationships at issue, the relevant participants, and the means by which the offenses were carried out are worlds apart from typical Mann Act convictions,” the defense wrote in a recent court filing.
In a hearing at Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday, the defense is expected to spar with prosecutors over the conviction, just over a week before Mr. Combs is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 3.
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The post Combs Back in Court to Push for Reversal of Conviction Before Sentencing appeared first on New York Times.
