The judge in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ criminal case rejected the hip-hop mogul’s request to toss out his prostitution-related convictions Tuesday, setting the stage for his sentencing.
Judge Arun Subramanian, who oversaw Combs’ eight-week federal trial this summer, turned down the rapper’s motion to throw out his convictions on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, which each carry a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
The Bad Boy Records founder is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
U.S. government prosecutors had accused Combs of orchestrating a decade-spanning “criminal enterprise” and forcing women to participate in marathon, drug-dazed sexual encounters with male escorts, known as “freak-offs.”
Combs, who had been held in a Brooklyn jail cell for more than a year, pleaded not guilty to all five counts at the heart of the trial, and he has denied the allegations against him.
Jurors acquitted Combs on one count of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion — denying prosecutors a verdict that could have sent the Grammy-winning artist to prison for the rest of his life.
He was found guilty on charges that are formally known as the Mann Act, a federal law passed in 1910 that outlaws moving people across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
In a Sept. 25 hearing, Combs’ lawyers argued the Mann Act didn’t apply to their client in part because he wasn’t running a “commercial business.”
They also insisted that the prosecution’s key witnesses — including ex-girlfriends Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a woman identified by the pseudonym “Jane” — willingly participated in the “freak-offs.”
“We are talking about adults having a threesome, bringing another adult into their private sex life,” Alexandra Shapiro, one of Combs’ defense lawyers, told Subramanian.
The prosecution attempted to rebuff that narrative, telling the judge that the government has an “important and substantial” interest in cracking down on exactly the kind of interstate prostitution Combs was accused of orchestrating for his sexual encounters.
“The government proved the defendant transported Cassie and ‘Jane’ domestically and internationally so they could participate in prostitution,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik said. “The ‘freak-offs’ were about one thing: his sexual gratification, his personal pleasure.”
Subramanian previously denied Combs’ efforts to be released on bail, saying in part that he “fails to satisfy his burden to demonstrate an entitlement to release.”
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