Sean “Diddy” Combs will be sentenced in a hearing set to be held October 3.
Last week, Diddy was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution after an eight-week trial. He faces up to ten years in prison on each count, though legal analysts predict he will get much less.
He was acquitted of the more serious charges of which he was accused – racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking.
After the verdict was announced last Wednesday, Judge Arun Subramanian had proposed scheduling the sentencing hearing for October 3, but was told by Combs’ lawyers that they’d hoped to expedite the process.
Ahead of a remote hearing on Tuesday, attorneys for Combs first proposed a date of September 22 for the sentencing hearing, but they later revised their proposal to October 3 in a subsequent letter to the judge shortly after.
The first letter said the defense proposal was subject to consent from the probation office. The second letter, which essentially backed off their push to expedite his sentencing, shifted the sentencing hearing back to its original date and said the probation office did not object to that schedule.
The attorneys and Diddy dialed into the remote hearing, but it lasted less than a minute after Subramanian’s deputy told the attorneys on the call that the judge would get back to them about their proposed date.
The music mogul has been in custody at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest last September. During a bail hearing that followed the verdict last Wednesday, Combs’ lawyers requested he be released on bail, arguing that he was not convicted of any violent offenses.
The judge denied the request to release Combs on bail, telling Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo that in his closing arguments he “full-throatedly … told the jury that there was violence here. And domestic violence is violence. And you said this is a case that did involve violence.”
Diddy received a standing ovation when he returned to the Metropolitan Detention Center after the verdict in his federal criminal trial last week, according to his spokesperson.
Prosecutors had accused Combs of leading a criminal enterprise in which he allegedly used threats, violence, forced labor, bribery and other crimes to coerce his former girlfriends Cassie Ventura and a woman who testified under a pseudonym Jane to engage in drug-fueled sex performances with male escorts called “Freak Offs” or “hotel nights.”
Combs pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers argued the so-called “Freak Offs” were consensual given his long-term relationships with both Ventura and Jane.
Diddy also faces dozens of civil lawsuits, for which he has denied all wrongdoing.
