By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK, April 9 (Reuters) - Lawyers for Sean "Diddy" Combs are expected to tell an appeals court on Thursday the judge who oversaw the hip-hop mogul's sex crimes trial should not have considered evidence that he abused and threatened former girlfriends in sentencing him to more than four years in prison for his conviction on prostitution charges.
Combs, 56, is asking the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn both his conviction and sentence. Combs is serving his sentence at a low-security
federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey.
His seven-week trial last year in Manhattan federal court centered on drug-fueled and days-long sexual performances, sometimes called "Freak Offs," between two former girlfriends of Combs and male sex workers. Combs, the founder of Bad Boy Records, was found guilty by a jury on July 2, 2025, on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
But jurors acquitted him on more serious sex trafficking and racketeering charges related to allegedly forcing the two former girlfriends - rhythm and blues singer Casandra Ventura and a woman known in court by the pseudonym Jane - to take part in the encounters while he watched, masturbated and sometimes filmed.
At Thursday's hearing before a 2nd Circuit three-judge panel, defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro is expected to argue that his conviction on prostitution charges should be overturned because he was alleged to have watched his former girlfriends have sex with paid escorts but did not take part himself.
In challenging the sentence, Shapiro is expected to argue that U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian improperly considered conduct related to the counts for which Combs was acquitted in sentencing him to 50 months in prison on October 3, 2025.
Shapiro has said the judge should not have considered evidence that Combs threatened to release an explicit video of Ventura and threatened to cut off rent payments for Jane in deciding on the sentence.
"It was unlawful, unconstitutional and a perversion of justice to sentence Combs as if the jury had found him guilty of sex trafficking and RICO," Shapiro wrote in court filing, referring to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
In response, prosecutor Christy Slavik said in a court filing that Subramanian was right to consider evidence of threats and abuse by Combs toward his former girlfriends, even though he was acquitted of sex trafficking, because that conduct was relevant to the prostitution counts.
"According to Combs, the District Court should have closed its eyes to how he carried out his Mann Act offenses and abused his victims," Slavik wrote, referring to the federal law criminalizing transportation to engage in prostitution.
Combs has acknowledged abusing his former girlfriends. But he has said incidents of what he called domestic violence were separate from the sexual performances at issue in the case, which he said were consensual.
He is currently due to be released from prison on April 15, 2028, Bureau of Prisons records show.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Will Dunham)
