Music mogul Sean “Diddy Combs” has received a 50 months prison sentence after being convicted on prostitution-related charges.
After an emotional day-long hearing on Friday, Judge Arun Subramanian gave a sentence of just over four years, despite the prosecution’s request for an eleven-year sentence.
Diddy Combs’s lawyers had appealed a far lighter penalty of 14 months, effectively time served, since the 55-year-old hip-hop star had already spent over than a year in police custody in Brooklyn, according to CNN.
Before sentencing, Diddy Combs addressed the court, expressing remorse. “I am truly sorry,” he said, asking the judge for “another chance.”
He added, “I ask your honour for mercy. I beg your honour for mercy.”
Ventura’s allegations
A jury found Combs guilty of two counts of transporting people across state borders for prostitution in July, but cleared him of the most serious offences, sex trafficking and racketeering.
Singer Casandra Ventura, also known as Cassie, his ex-girlfriend, sent a scathing letter to the court. Ventura talked about being sexually, emotionally, and physically abused by Combs for years.
She claimed that she and another woman, Jane, were forced into “freak-offs,” which are sexual marathons with hired males that Combs planned and occasionally recorded.
She urged the judge to consider “the many lives that Sean Combs has upended with his abuse and control.”
“The entire courtroom watched actual footage of Combs kicking and beating me as I tried to run away from a freak off in 2016,” Ventura wrote.
Christy Slavik, the prosecutor, contended that Combs has not yet accepted accountability.
Diddy Combs had scheduled speaking engagements in Miami in hopes of receiving a lower sentence, according to Slavik, who described it as “the height of hubris.”
Defence lawyer Nicole Westmoreland however, in defense referred to Diddy Combs as a social justice activist and “an inspiration” to the Black community.
Combs’s six grown children also pleased for a another chance. Quincy Brown, his oldest, referred to him as “a changed man.” “Please, please give our family the chance to heal together,” D’Lila Combs, one of his daughters, pleaded with the judge. As people, not as headlines.
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