Sean “Diddy” Combs held his head in his hands and appeared to be stunned when a judge handed down a 50-month sentence in a New York courtroom on Friday for prostitution-related offenses.
It was a sentence far less than the life term he potentially faced at the start of his sex-trafficking conspiracy trial back in May, but Combs appeared shocked by the outcome. The judgment came just minutes after Combs had pleaded with Judge Arun Subramanian that he took full “accountability and responsibility” for his actions, and stating that he was a changed man who would, if released, devote himself to his family and community.
The sentence down came with barely a noise in the courtroom. Combs’ family members and supporters had been warned by a court clerk to keep any expression of their feelings in check.
After the sentence was delivered, Combs appeared surprised to find two court marshals behind him, ready to lead him back to Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn, where he has been incarcerated since his arrest 13 months ago.
Outside the courtroom, there was a palpable sense of deflation as neither prosecutors nor Combs’s defense had got the result they wanted. A trial that had heard graphic accounts of sexual abuse, which the defendant had claimed was consensual, ended in a kind of whimper. The sentence handed down – four years, two months - was 10 months less than a sentencing panel recommended and less than half of the 135 months, or 11 years, prosecutors requested.
Combs is likely to spend only three more years behind bars, with time he has already served subtracted. But the sentence was also, clearly, far longer than Combs and his supporters had wanted, and perhaps even expected.
Combs was convicted of two counts of transportation to engage prostitution in July, charges stemming from forcing girlfriends to engage in elaborate “freak-offs” involving male prostitutes. But on the more serious charges – of running a mafia-like conspiracy that prosecutors claimed were designed on to fulfill a need for power and control – he was found not guilty.
“No matter what anybody says, I know that I’m truly sorry,” he told Subramanian. “I got lost in excess, I got lost in my ego. Because of my decisions, I lost my freedom. I beg your honor for mercy.”
Combs’s lawyer had spent much of the day arguing that his client was a devoted family man who had lost control of his life after surgery in 2000 that left him addicted to painkillers as his life spiralled out of control. Combs’s six adult children spoke on his behalf.
But the judge was unmoved by the defense arguments that Combs should be released, effectively, on time served. They left no stone unturned in that effort, making arguments based on racial justice, childhood trauma, and his former position as a business and Black community leader.
Subramanian appeared unpersuaded by Combs’s testimony that he was a reformed man, pointing out that he had engaged in an abusive “freak-off” with “Jane”, a witness in the trial, even after he posted an Instagram apology following the release of video showing him beating another former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.
The judge pointed to testimony offered by Jane, an influencer, in which Combs had directed her to “take this fucking pill, get out there, suck his dick [referring to an escort]. You’re not going to ruin my night.”
“You abused them, physically, emotionally and psychologically,” Subramanian told Combs. “Why did it happen for so long? Because you had the power and resources to keep it going, and because you didn’t get caught.”
He lavished praise on Ventura and Jane for coming forward, calling them “strong women”.
“Nothing about this case is good,” the judge lamented, “except for the victims who came forward.”
But even in its denouement, the trial of Sean Combs had an air of a carnival. In court, family members came dressed elaborately, while outside federal court in lower Manhattan supporters and influencers each seemed to shout more loudly than the next into live-streaming phones, each propelled by excitement induced by proximity to Combs’s celebrity.
However Combs’s trial will be remembered – as an overreach by prosecutors who bet on turning a sex-trafficking case into a mafia-like conspiracy, or as an episode in long story about brutal coercion involving money, sex and power – Diddy himself may have said it best: he told the hearing his behavior had been “disgusting, shameful and sick”.
