A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Sean Combs to remain in jail until his trial for sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, rejecting an appeal by the music mogul’s lawyers requesting that he be released on bail.
At Mr. Combs’s arraignment on Tuesday, a magistrate judge rejected Mr. Combs’s bail request and ordered him detained, citing his history of substance abuse and alleged violence, prosecutors’ accusations of witness tampering and the serious nature of the sex trafficking charge.
“The alleged victims are people with whom there is a power imbalance,” Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky said, “who are susceptible to coercion, not necessarily threats, but concern about losing benefits that they have been provided in the past.”
In appealing that decision on Wednesday to a district judge, Andrew L. Carter Jr., Mr. Combs’s lawyers argued once again that he had been cooperating with the prosecutors’ investigation for months, had voluntarily surrendered his passport and had paid off an $18 million mortgage on his house in Miami Beach so that the property could be used to secure a $50 million bond.
The defense also disputed the government’s allegation that he had intimidated potential witnesses, saying that Mr. Combs had contacted people only to inform them that his counsel would be in touch to interview them. The government cited the example of Kalenna Harper, a performer who was in the group Diddy — Dirty Money with Dawn Richard, who last week filed a lawsuit that accused Mr. Combs of groping and threatening her.
In the four days after Ms. Richard’s suit was filed, the government said, Mr. Combs called or texted Ms. Harper 58 times; prosecutors called it an example of how he has tried to keep potential witnesses “in his pocket and at his disposal.”
Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, called that contact “the furthest thing from witness obstruction I can think of,” and noted that Ms. Harper made a statement on social media offering a different interpretation of events that she witnessed.
Anthony Capozzolo, a former federal prosecutor who represented a key figure in the Nxivm sex trafficking case against Keith Raniere, said that in the case against Mr. Combs, the government seemed eager to keep him detained in part because there might be witnesses who would be more willing to speak with Mr. Combs in jail.
“The same thing happened in the Nxivm case,” Mr. Capozzolo said. “Once he was locked up and people thought the air of invincibility was shattered, they were able to get even more witnesses.”
Judge Carter’s ruling on Wednesday means that Mr. Combs will return to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a hulking concrete structure with about 1,200 inmates that for years has been plagued by accusations of poor conditions.
David Patton, a former executive director of Federal Defenders of New York, has tracked the problems at M.D.C., as the facility is known, for years, including violence, sexual assault, unsatisfactory medical care and a lack of consistent management. Wardens constantly cycle in and out, he said, rarely lasting more than about nine months.
“They are the worst conditions in the Bureau of Prisons system that I’m aware of,” said Mr. Patton, who is now in private practice at the firm Hecker Fink in New York. “It’s awful, it’s a disgrace.”
In a 15-page letter to Judge Carter requesting bail, Mr. Combs’s lawyers called the M.D.C. “not fit for pre-trial detention” and cited recent reports of an inmate’s murder and four suicides in the past three years.
In response to questions from The New York Times, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons said it “takes seriously our duty to protect the individuals entrusted in our custody,” and that this year the bureau’s director “appointed an urgent action team to take a holistic look at the challenges at M.D.C. Brooklyn,” which included increasing the permanent staffing and addressing more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests.
According to a five-week rotating food menu circulated by the bureau, M.D.C. offers an assortment of meals like beef stew, chicken stir fry and hamburgers for lunch and dinner, with daily vegetarian options. For breakfast, coffee is offered on weekends only.
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