The judge in Sean Combs’ sex-trafficking trial hasn’t decided yet if the Grammy winner should get a new trial or be acquitted, but prosecutors today want Diddy to serve over 11 years behind bars and pay “a hefty fine” in the six-digit range for the two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, he was found guilty of this summer.
If Judge Arun Subramanian doesn’t grant the defense motions and goes ahead with the October 3 scheduled sentencing hearing, the chasm is deep and wide between what Combs’ Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos-led team are proposing and what the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Souther District of New York have put on the table tonight.
As the government’s 164-page sentencing memo signed by current U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton states: “Throughout this case and over the course of a seven-week trial, this Court has seen extensive evidence demonstrating the defendant’s criminal conduct perpetrated across more than a decade.”
“At trial, the defendant disputed that the Government had made out particular elements of the charged federal offenses, but he largely conceded his conduct: the violence, domestic abuse, drug use and distribution, and bribery,” Clayton continues for the once Maurene Comey-led (now fired and suing) prosecution team and the wide-ranging (some may say, overreaching) case it put on. “The defendant will not be punished for any crimes of which he was acquitted, of course, but punishment for his crimes of conviction must take into account the manner in which he committed them. His crimes of conviction are serious and have warranted sentences over ten years in multiple cases for defendants who, like Sean Combs, engaged in violence and put others in fear. Consistent with those cases and based on the corroborated evidence presented at trial, this Court should impose a sentence of no less than 135 months’ imprisonment.”
Found not guilty on July 2 by the eight men and four women jury of the sex-trafficking and racketeering charges that could have seen the 55-year old Combs in prison for the rest of his life, the 135 months recommendation from the SDNY equals 11 year and three months to be specific. That’s lot longer than the 14 months, with time served since the much accused and much sued Combs’ September 2024 arrest thrown in, that his defense have asked for. The defense’s light recommendation, if agreed to by the judge, would see Diddy out of Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center before Christmas.
“A substantial term of imprisonment is also needed in this case because the defendant is unrepentant,” the feds’ extensive document filed early September 30 East Coat time adds before putting the bricks to the self-described domestic abuser and swinger Bad Boy Records founder. “The defendant tries to recast decades of abuse as simply the function of mutually toxic relationships. But there is nothing mutual about a relationship where one person holds all the power and the other ends up bloodied and bruised.”
Along with the sentencing memo, the government filed several victim impact statements from ex-Combs girlfriend and testifying witness Cassie Ventura and others. Noticeably absent from the victim impact’ statements collection was anything from “Jane,” a more recent ex of Diddy’s who claimed extensive abuse, assaults, drug juiced “freak-offs” and more in her time in the witness box earlier this year.
While both the prosecution and the defense are drawing from the federal sentencing guidelines (which have a maximum sentence of 10-years for each of the counts once mogul Combs was found guilty of), they clearly are interpreting them very differently. Which interpretation lands best with Judge Subramanian will be made clear at Friday’s sentencing hearing — which Sean “Diddy” Combs, as well as various family members and hangers-on, will be in NYC’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse for.
That’s if Judge Subramanian doesn’t toss the whole thing or send it back to Square One, an unlikely possibility, but still a possibility. Reading judicial tea leaves is almost always a losing endeavor. However, the fact that the usually circumspect but fast-paced Judge Subramanian said at the end of the September 25 motions hearing that he would be putting out his ruling “very shortly and otherwise will see everyone back here next Friday,” and still hasn’t put anything in the docket has to make both sides pause at this late hour.
A hard pause especially with the still lingering notion of a Donald Trump pardon in the ether. A very hard pause.
The post 11 Years: That’s What Sean Combs Should Serve In Prison, Feds Recommend; Sentencing On Prostitution Guilty Verdicts Likely This Week appeared first on Deadline.
