Sean Combs (at proper) watches his kids current affect statements throughout his sentencing listening to in New York. Combs was sentenced to 50 months in jail.
Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
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Jane Rosenberg/Reuters
On Friday, Sean Combs was sentenced by a federal decide to 50 months in jail. The 55-year-old music mogul was convicted in July on two counts of transportation for prostitution, however acquitted on extra severe costs of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
After a daylong listening to that culminated in Combs himself addressing the decide, talking at size for the primary time through the trial, Choose Arun Subramanian stated {that a} vital sentence was required to “ship a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence in opposition to girls is met with actual accountability.”
Subramanian made his determination after listening to arguments from federal prosecutors, Combs’ protection attorneys and Combs himself. His protection attorneys had argued that their shopper ought to obtain not more than 14 months behind bars. With time already served, that may imply he’d be launched by the top of the yr. Federal prosecutors, however, requested that Subramanian sentence Combs to a minimum of 11 years and three months in jail.
Combs has been held in a Brooklyn jail since his arrest final September. The sentencing listening to was the end result of an eight-week trial outlined by emotionally-charged testimony, movie star appearances and a buzzing courthouse full of hordes of Combs’ supporters, social media influencers and reporters. Federal prosecutors spent six weeks presenting an elaborate, typically meandering case that accused Combs of working a prison group that enabled and hid intercourse crimes for many years. Their two foremost witnesses, the singer Cassie Ventura and a lady who testified utilizing the pseudonym “Jane,” instructed the court docket that Combs lured them into romantic relationships after which repeatedly pressured them into drug-fueled intercourse marathons with male escorts.
Combs’ protection workforce spent a lot of the trial discrediting the ladies’s testimony by presenting textual content message proof through which Ventura and Jane every seemed to be agreeing to the encounters and serving to to plan them. After the prosecution introduced greater than two dozen witnesses — together with Combs’ former staff, federal brokers and mates of the alleged victims — the protection referred to as none, and rested its case in underneath half-hour. In the end, a jury acquitted Combs of intercourse trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, however discovered him responsible of transporting Jane and Ventura throughout state strains to interact in business intercourse.
Regardless of Combs’ acquittal on probably the most severe costs, no one — not even his personal attorneys — denied that he precipitated hurt. A key piece of proof within the case was a 2016 surveillance video of Combs beating Ventura in a resort hallway. All through the trial, Combs’ protection attorneys conceded that their shopper had a historical past of home violence, however argued the federal government was not charging him for these crimes.
Throughout Friday’s listening to, prosecutors pointed to Combs’ violent habits as a justification for an extended sentence.
