Sean “Diddy” Combs’s prison release date has been moved forward again after multiple adjustments.
In 2025, the music mogul, 56, was found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He escaped more serious charges, including a racketeering charge and two sex trafficking counts. He was sentenced to 50 months in prison and fined $500,000.
Since then, Combs’s legal team has repeatedly challenged the conviction, claiming he was treated unfairly at trial and that the First Amendment should win his freedom.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, Combs’s release date is now February 23, 2028. He is currently incarcerated at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey.
It’s the latest in a string of adjustments. Earlier this year, his release date was listed as April 15, 2028. Before that, it had been set for April 25, 2028, and previously June 4, 2028, People magazine noted.
Combs’s representative told The Independent they had no information as to why Combs’s prison sentence had been reduced.
The rapper’s lawyers have made repeated attempts to appeal his conviction. In April, they went before federal appeals court judges to argue his conviction should be reversed, or he should at least be freed and resentenced to less time.
They repeated claims in written arguments that they made before the trial judge, including an assertion that Combs’s films of sexual encounters between his girlfriends and male sex workers amounted to “amateur pornography” and was protected by the First Amendment.
The attorneys said the term “prostitution” should be interpreted narrowly to exclude what they portray as voyeuristic and expressive activity.
The lawyers also argue that Combs' sentence was too harsh, saying the trial judge wrongly based it in part on a conclusion that the crimes involved fraud and coercion and that Combs was a leader or organizer of criminal activity.
Combs was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that carried the potential for a life sentence. He was convicted under the federal Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for any sexual crime.
Federal prosecutors said in court papers that Combs' recordings do not make his case a free speech issue.
They said that if Combs was right in claiming that “creative,” “elaborate” and “highly staged” sex acts meant that they were protected by the First Amendment, then “brothels offering elaborate and staged scenes for individuals to have sex with women for payment could claim First Amendment protection.”
Combs’s trial last year exposed the sordid private life of one of the most influential figures in music. The case featured harrowing testimony about violence, drugs and sexual performances that witnesses said he called “freak-offs” or “hotel nights.”
He did not testify. His defense team acknowledged that he could be violent but argued that prosecutors were straining to make a federal crime out of his personal life.
Additional reporting by The Associated Press
