{"id":108465,"date":"2025-12-25T03:52:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/108465\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T03:52:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:52:27","slug":"diddys-lawyers-appeal-conviction-seek-reversal-or-reduced-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/108465\/","title":{"rendered":"Diddy’s lawyers appeal conviction, seek reversal or reduced sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (TNND) \u2014 Lawyers for Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs appealed his conviction Tuesday, seeking immediate release and either reversal of his prostitution-related charges<\/a> or a reduced four-year sentence.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The 56-year-old<\/a> was scheduled to be released in May 2028<\/a>, but will spend nearly an extra month behind bars after he reportedly broke several rules <\/a>at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institute in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Updated Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records show his release was pushed back to June 4, 2028. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Combs said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a \u201cthirteenth juror\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

They noted that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses \u2014 even when coercion, which the jury didn\u2019t find here, is involved,\u201d the lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judge defied the jury\u2019s verdict and found Combs \u2018coerced,\u2019 \u2018exploited,\u2019 and \u2018forced\u2019 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,\u201d the lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cfreak-off.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym \u201c Jane,\u201d said she was pressured into sex with male workers during what Combs called \u201chotel nights,\u201d drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also could last days.<\/p>\n

______<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (TNND) \u2014 Lawyers for Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs appealed his conviction Tuesday, seeking immediate release and either…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-108465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}