NEW YORK (TNND) — Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs appealed his conviction Tuesday, seeking immediate release and either reversal of his prostitution-related charges or a reduced four-year sentence.
The appeal was filed with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan and claims Combs was treated harshly at sentencing by a federal judge who let evidence surrounding charges he was acquitted of unjustly influence the punishment.
The 56-year-old was scheduled to be released in May 2028, but will spend nearly an extra month behind bars after he reportedly broke several rules at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institute in New Jersey.
Updated Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records show his release was pushed back to June 4, 2028.
Combs was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking at a trial that ended in July. He was convicted under the Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for any sexual crime.
Lawyers for Combs said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” in October when he sentenced Combs to four years and two months in prison. They said he erred by letting evidence surrounding the acquitted charges influence the sentence he imposed.
They noted that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn’t require force, fraud, or coercion. They asked the appeals court, which has not yet heard oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his immediate release from prison, or direct Subramanian to reduce his sentence.
“Defendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved,” the lawyers wrote.
“The judge defied the jury’s verdict and found Combs ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘forced’ his girlfriends to have sex and led a criminal conspiracy. These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant,” the lawyers wrote.
During the eight-week trial, two of Combs’s former girlfriends testified about drug-fueled nights of sex with men hired through escort services. They said they felt forced to participate and feared his retaliation.
Casandra “Cassie” Ventura had told the jury about their decade-long relationship, where she was forced to have sex with strangers hundreds of times. Jurors saw video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”
The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym “ Jane,” said she was pressured into sex with male workers during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also could last days.
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Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article.