Prosecutors asked an appellate court on Friday to affirm Sean Combs’s conviction and sentencing on prostitution-related charges, arguing that the music mogul had been a flagrant offender who used violence and threats to commit his crimes.
Mr. Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, mounted an appeal after a jury convicted him last year on two counts of violating the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport people across state lines to engage in prostitution. During an eight-week trial in federal court, two of his former girlfriends testified that he had arranged for them to engage in drug-fueled sex marathons, called “freak-offs” or “hotel nights,” with paid male escorts.
He was sentenced to 50 months — or a little more than four years — and is serving time in a federal prison outside Philadelphia.
Mr. Combs’s appeal argues that the judge who sentenced him improperly relied on his own finding that the women had been “coerced,” “exploited” and “forced” into the sexual encounters, when the jury made no such determination. The jurors acquitted Mr. Combs, 56, of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, the most serious charges in the case.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Mr. Combs to more than 11 years in prison, while the defense argued that he had largely been vindicated by the jury and had already spent enough time in jail.
In papers filed on Friday night in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, federal prosecutors argued that in his sentencing the judge had rightly taken into consideration how the women had been treated while they acceded to Mr. Combs’s sexual demands over a period of years.
“According to Combs, the district court should have closed its eyes to how he carried out his Mann Act offenses and abused his victims — violently beating them, threatening them, lying to them and plying them with drugs,” the prosecutors wrote.
In their appeal, Mr. Combs’s lawyers described the sex as consensual. During the trial, they wrote, “prosecutors failed to prove the inflammatory allegations because their own evidence revealed the truth to the jury: Combs and his girlfriends sometimes invited a third party — a paid professional adult male entertainer — into their private sex life.”
Prosecutors also pushed back on Mr. Combs’s argument that because he acted as a voyeur during the encounters, watching and filming his girlfriends’ having sex with other men, he did not violate the Mann Act. Mr. Combs paid “dozens” of men to have sex with his girlfriends, the prosecutors wrote, often arranging for them to travel internationally or across the country.
Oral arguments in the appeal are scheduled for April.
In prison, Mr. Combs has been accepted into a drug-abuse rehabilitation program that could shorten his sentence substantially. Federal prison records currently estimate that he will be released in May 2028, taking into account that he could earn time off for good behavior.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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