Diddy renews plea for bail ahead of sentencing

MANHATTAN (CN) ­— Lawyers for entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs asked a New York federal judge on Tuesday morning to release him from jail on a $50 million bail package while he awaits sentencing on prostitution-related convictions.

Concluding his seven-week trial in early July, a jury in Manhattan federal court acquitted Combs on the top felony counts he faced ­— racketeering and sex trafficking charges that carried a maximum sentence of life in prison — and instead convicted him on two counts of violating the Mann Act by transporting people for purposes of prostitution, counts that carry maximum sentences of 10 years apiece.

“Sean Combs should not be in jail for this conduct,” Combs’s attorney Marc Agnifilo wrote in the 12-page motion for release on bail. “In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of john, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend, when he did not even have sex with the escort himself.”

Agnifilo argues in the bail motion that Combs was participating in a consensual “swingers” lifestyle “that is not uncommon today,” where he and his girlfriend “arranged for adult men to have consensual sexual relations with the adult long-term girlfriend.”

Combs’ defense argues that in similar Mann Act convictions, where there was no conviction on the sex trafficking or violence offenses, but a conviction on the prostitution transportation offense, the defendants were released pending sentencing.

Agnifilo additionally argues in the motion that Combs’ conditions of confinement during his nearly 11 months at the troubled Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn qualify as “exceptional circumstances” warranting his release under United States v. Chavez, in which U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found conditions at the federal jail “dreadful in many respects.”

Combs’ earlier motions for release on bail before his case went on trial, secured by his $48 million Star Island Miami mansion as collateral, were repeatedly denied by multiple judges who cited his 2016 beating of R&B singer Cassie Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel and subsequent apparent attempts at witness tampering.

During the trial, Agnifilo conceded that Combs had subjected Ventura to domestic violence, and said Combs would have pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges. Instead, he is standing trial on racketeering and sex trafficking counts. “We own the domestic violence,” he said during the defense’s closing summation.

The same episodes of domestic violence was referenced in U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian’s decision to keep Combs detained after the jury’s split verdict was returned in early July, acquitting Combs on the top RICO and sex trafficking counts but convicting on the Mann Act prostitution-transportation crimes.

Seeking to overcome both the judges’ and prosecution’s claims that Combs remains a danger to the community because of that history of violence, Agnifilo wrote in the bail motion that Combs’ domestic violence was limited to his mutually abusive relationship with Cassie a single incident with the ex-girlfriend referred to at trial as “Jane.”

“If released on conditions, Sean Combs will not be violent to anyone,” Agnifilo wrote. “As we said in court, this jury gave him his life back, and he will not squander his second chance at life, nor would he do anything to further jeopardize his seven children not having a father, and four of his children not having a parent at all.”

Formerly known as Puff Daddy, Combs worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding his own record label, Bad Boy Entertainment, in 1993. He came to national prominence in the early 1990s, producing hit debut albums for rapper The Notorious B.I.G. and R&B singer Mary J. Blige.

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