Sean Combs Sentenced To Four Years In Prison After Sex-Trafficking Conviction

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ defense insisted at today’s sentencing hearing on the Grammy winner’s sex-trafficking trial verdict that their client has been a “model prisoner” and model citizen. But a federal judge really wasn’t going for that.

After listening to arguments from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the heavyweight defense Friday in New York City in Combs’ sex-trafficking and racketeering trial, and the defendant himself, Judge Arun Subramanian has sentenced the Bad Boy Records founder to four years (50 months) behind bars.

Bragging for years to be a billionaire, Combs was also hit with a $500,000 fine – the maximum. Once out of prison, Combs is to be subjected to five years of supervised release, the judge said.

“The court has to consider all of your history here,” the judge told Combs after a day where the defense attempted to paint a distinctly rosy view of their much-accused client in a search for leniency. A history that Judge Subramanian asserted “shows that you abused the power and control over the lives of women who you professed to love.”

Damningly, in words we heard at the various failed bail hearings over the past year, Judge Subramanian added: “The court is not assured that if released these crimes will not be committed again.”

Avoiding both the compact sentence the defense wanted and the over-a-decade in prison that the feds asked for, the 50-month sentence is under the probation office’s recommendations for Combs of 70-87 months plus fines for the two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution he was found guilty of in July. The prison time handed down also squares in relative terms with the sentence the judge indicated earlier Friday that he would be handing down. All of which means, unless Donald Trump grants Diddy a pardon, the 55-year senior “I Need a Girl” performer won’t be a free man for a while, even with that “model prisoner” good behavior.

Just before the sentencing, the perpetual innocence-maintaining Combs himself took centerstage for about 10 minutes to speak.

He began with apologies at some length for the pain physically, mentally and more that he caused to ex-girlfriends Cassie Ventura and “Jane,” both of whom testified at his trial. In a manner at first very unlike his brash letter to the judge of October 2, Combs said he felt “disgusting, shameful and sick” with himself over his years of abuse, manipulations and other harmful measures towards others. Then again, making it about him in a way that revealed a misreading of the room, he after just a few minutes went back to the dolefulness core of his correspondence of Thursday to Judge Arun Subramanian: “I’m not this larger-than-life person. I’m just a human being.”

“I ask your honor for a chance to be a leader in my community again.”

A human being and a former leader who is getting a significant stretch in the substantial house now.

“Today is about accountability and justice,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik bluntly told the court Friday, with Combs, his immediate family and a legion of lawyers in attendance. “This isn’t just a case about ‘freak offs’ and hotel nights,” the prosecutor added, citing the filmed, drug-fueled marathon sex sessions Diddy allegedly strong-armed then-girlfriends Ventura and “Jane” into over the years with paid male escorts. Both a very pregnant Ventura and “Jane” tearfully testified at Combs’ trial this summer, along with law enforcement officials, subpoenaed Diddy ex-employees and superstar Kid Cudi.

Emerging from Combs’ explicit, visceral and media-spotlighted eight-week trial, the Mann Act charges come with a maximum sentence of 10 years each. However, the judge can consider more or less time, as occurred today in Lower Manhattan’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse.

If Combs had been found guilty on the sex-trafficking and RICO charges, today’s hearing would have had very different stakes. In essence, he would have been staring down a possible life sentence in federal prison. To that, the July verdicts by the jury of eight men and four women was a clear and humiliating loss for the prosecution led by (now fired and suing) Maurene Comey in an straightforward avoidable act of overreach.

As well as “civil rights” leader, as his lawyer called him, Combs himself speaking in court Friday (something he did not do in testimony during the trial), a number of the defendant’s sobbing adult children (of whom he has said he needs to be free to take care of) addressed the room.

Also in attendance in the courtroom, but not speaking Friday was Virginia Huynh.

Brought up in the initial indictment of Combs as “Victim-3.,” also going under “Gina,’ the former girlfriend of Diddy’s almost upended the case at the start in May when she suddenly made herself unavailable to testify for the prosecution. Today, Huynh, who came out as a supporter of Combs in August, sat at the back of the courtroom as others spoke.

Denied a modern trial and an acquittal earlier this week, Combs’ Marc Agnifilo- and Teny Geragos-led defense had argued for a sentence of 14 months, with time already served for their client. It also presented an ill-considered and high-production-value 11-minute pitch video for a airy sentence. Diddy himself wrote to Judge Subramanian on October 2 that he had spent the past year behind bars at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his September 2024 arrest “working diligently to become the best version of myself.”

Today in court, on the 30th anniversary of O.J. Simpson’s controversial acquittal of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the defense’s sometimes teary Nicole Westmoreland took up the theme of the “help and inspiration” Combs provided the music industry and youthful men of Black America in particular.

Later another defense attorney Brian Steel pointed to Combs’ “untreated trauma” from the loss of his father at a very youthful age as the source of both his client’s ambitions, addictions and other demons. It certainly can’t be missed that while the defense called zero witnesses in their case during the trial, it is their side that is loading up on speakers today. One of the best defense attorneys in the nation but far from slick or either folksy, Steel went on to describe Combs’ time in lockup as being under constant threat of violence, and a guard had to stop a potential stabbing of his very well-known client. The lawyer also detailed Combs has been sleeping in a room at the MDC with over two dozen other men amidst nights of screaming in the cells, fearing “polluted water,” and he “eats out of bags, he eats chips all day long.”

Steel also stated to Judge Subramanian the now sober Combs deserves a second chance in part because he has truly “taken responsibility” for his misconduct. In a rebuttal to the defense’s presentation, prosecutor Slavik noted that of all the remarks from Combs’ team, there was barely any mention of his victims. In fact, Slavik stated that Steel punctuated “how Cassie wanted it.” Taking a pause she then said: “That’s untrue and it’s offensive.”

The rebuke resembled Slavik’s earlier comment that when it comes to Sean Combs, “his respect for the law is just lip service.”

The feds advocated in their own sentencing recommendations from earlier this week of Combs receiving a whooping 135 months, or just over 11 years.  During her time at the lectern, prosecutor Slavik termed this as its heart a “case with real victims who have suffered real harm at the hands of the defendant.” She added: “It’s about a man who did horrible things to other people to satisfy his own sexual gratification.”

“He didn’t need the money,” Slavik went on to say, with a side swipe at Combs’ once much flaunted wealth. “His currency was control. And he weaponized that currency to devastating effects on the victims.”

In the end Friday, neither side got their sentencing wish. Sean Combs also did not get his freedom.

The latter means, on one level, the once-highflying mogul will not be making those planned so-called “speaking engagements” in Miami next week after all. Speaking engagements on entrepreneurship, the criminal justice system, and life coaching, his team pledged. Speaking engagements that Slavik at one juncture today called “the height of hubris,” and the very idea of it displays how Combs really doesn’t get what he has done and what he is facing.

Still, the defense has made it clear over the months since the July 2 verdict that they plan to appeal the case and its outcome. Even as the judge stayed within the sentencing guidelines, with today as a trial run, pardon the pun, expect those filings in the very near future, I’m told.