Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ lawyers plan to appeal as hip-hop star faces years in jail

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ life of luxury atop the hip-hop world vanished with his criminal conviction.

He now faces the grim prospect of more years behind bars as his lawyers make plans to appeal.

Combs’ carefully cultivated reputation as an affable celebrity entrepreneur, A-list party host and reality TV star came crashing down on Friday.

The Grammy-winning artist and music executive was sentenced to four years and two months in prison for transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters.

It was a public reckoning for the music star, 55, who made a plea for leniency and wept as his lawyers played a video portraying his family life, career and philanthropy.

US district judge Arun Subramanian also fined Combs 500,000 dollars (£370,000), the maximum allowed.

Combs was convicted in July of flying his girlfriends and male sex workers around the country to engage in drug-fuelled sexual encounters over many years and in multiple places.

The nearly two-month trial in a federal court in Manhattan featured harrowing testimony from women who said Combs beat, threatened, sexually assaulted and blackmailed them.

He was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life.

Combs has already served a year in jail, meaning he could get out in about three years.

Prosecutors sought a sentence of more than 11 years. Combs’ lawyers wanted him freed immediately and said the time behind bars has already forced his remorse and sobriety.

Combs’ lawyers have said they will appeal. There is no chance of parole in the federal system.

Prosecutor Christy Slavik said that sparing Combs serious prison time would excuse years of violence.

Key witnesses against Combs urged the judge to reject leniency, saying they feared for their safety if he was freed.

Combs was sent to a Brooklyn federal lockup a year ago after his lawyers unsuccessfully fought to keep him out of jail after his arrest.

The lockup is used mainly for post-arrest detention for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates are there to serve short sentences.

The facility has been plagued by problems since opening in the 1990s. In recent years its conditions have been so stark that some judges have refused to send people there.

Combs’ lawyers were denied a request to let him await trial under house arrest at his mansion on an island in Miami Beach, Florida.

As for the remainder of his sentence, there is a federal lockup for men near Combs’ home.

It is a low-security federal correctional institution at Miami with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. The inmate population there totals 1,000, including 174 at the camp and 826 at the correctional institution, according to its website.

Combs was sentenced for violating the federal Mann Act, an anti-prostitution law with a century-old history. The Mann Act makes it illegal to transport someone across state lines for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sex acts.

The law was amended in the 1980s and today it is primarily used for prosecuting interstate prostitution crimes or people accused of taking underage children across state lines for sexual purposes.

Defence lawyer Jason Driscoll said on Friday that the law was misapplied.

Combs’ reputational freefall began when his former long-time girlfriend and R&B singer Cassie, the criminal trial’s key witness, sued him in 2023, alleging years of sexual and physical abuse.

He settled for 20 million dollars (£15 million), but the lawsuit set off a storm of similar allegations from other women and men.

The disclosure last year of the federal sex trafficking investigation on the day of a bicoastal raid of Combs’ houses took the allegations to another level of seriousness and public knowledge.

The disclosure that 1,000 bottles of baby oil and other lubricants had been seized  as part of the raid entered popular culture immediately.

The case turned Combs into a punchline as much as a villain. Talk shows, Saturday Night Live and social media posters milked it for jokes about “freak-offs” and the voluminous amounts of baby oil he had for the sex marathons.

Fellow celebrities were called out for past Diddy associations, though no others were implicated in the criminal allegations.