Prosecutors within the Sean “Diddy” Combs case have urged the choose to reject a request by the hip-hop mogul for acquittal or retrial on prostitution-related fees.
Attorneys for Combs filed the request after he was discovered responsible of two counts of transportation for engagement in prostitution – for flying girlfriends and male intercourse employees across the US and overseas for sexual encounters known as “freak offs” – on the finish of his high-profile trial in New York.
He was cleared of extra critical fees of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking. The trial would have been “totally different” if these fees had not been included, his defence staff argued, saying they lacked credibility.
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File pic: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Now, prosecutors have responded to the request for the conviction to be thrown out, or for a retrial, saying in a court docket doc that there was “ample evidence” offered in the course of the trial that supported the jury’s convictions.
“[Combs] masterminded every aspect of freak offs,” the doc says. “He transported escorts across state lines to engage in freak offs for pay. He directed the sexual activity of escorts… for his own sexual gratification. And he personally engaged in sexual activity during freak offs.”
The 2 transportation for prostitution fees Combs was convicted of fall below America’s Mann Act, which prohibits interstate commerce associated to prostitution.
The rapper’s legal professionals have argued that, to their information, he’s “the only person” ever convicted of those fees for the conduct he was accused of in court docket.
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Combs’s response after listening to the verdicts following his trial. Pic: Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
“The men chose to travel and engage in the activity voluntarily,” the defence staff mentioned of their submission to the choose for acquittal. “The verdict confirms the women were not vulnerable or exploited or trafficked or sexually assaulted during the freak offs or hotel nights.”
Of their response, prosecutors mentioned “evidence of the defendant’s guilt on the Mann Act counts was overwhelming”.
Combs, probably the most influential hip-hop producers of all time, is because of be sentenced in October. Every cost carries a possible jail sentence of 10 years.
He would have been going through a compulsory 15 years – and as much as life – in jail had he been convicted of the costs of racketeering conspiracy and intercourse trafficking, of which he was exonerated.
Combs fell to his knees when the verdicts had been learn out, and his staff later hailed it a “victory”.
The rapper has already served almost a 12 months at a federal jail in Brooklyn, the place he has been since his arrest in September 2024.
Combs has been denied bail regardless of arguments by his legal professionals that he ought to face little to no further jail time for his convictions.
Decide Arun Subramanian, who heard the trial, mentioned Combs has not met the burden of exhibiting by clear and convincing proof a “lack of danger to any person or the community”.
