With less than 24 hours to go before Sean Combs learns if he will spend years or just months in prison for being found guilty this summer on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, the one time high-flying “All About the Benjamins” performer is all about proving he deserves a second change after “working diligently to become the best version of myself.”
“Today, I humbly ask you for another chance—another chance to be a better father, another chance to be a better son, another chance to be a better leader in my community, and another chance to live a better life, the much-accused man also known as Diddy wrote Judge Arun Subramanian in a letter full of seemingly more promises and personal growth than contrition. “I am writing this not to gain any sympathy or pity, this experience is simply the truth of my existence and has changed my life forever and I will never commit a crime again,” the relatively new clean and sober “for the first time in 25 years” Combs said in the four-page letter submitted in the federal docket Thursday.
READ SEAN COMBS’ OCT. 2 LETTER TO THE JUDGE FOR LENIENCY HERE
Expressing regrets in a few phases ( “My domestic violence will always be a heavy burden that I will have to forever carry”) for his abusive treatment of ex-girlfriends Cassie Ventura and “Jane,” both of who testified at his nearly two-month long trial earlier this year, the still very rich Combs side steps the filmed and drug fueled “freak off” sex sessions with paid escorts that made up a lot of his case and sex-trafficking charges, to instead spends the vast majority of his crafted letter talking about his needs and accomplishments. Specifically, “being asked by my fellow inmates to teach and mentor them” while in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in September 2024, and hoping to go home to take care of his seven children and his 84-year-old mother.
(L-R) Cassie Ventura, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
Getty Images
Found not guilty July 2 by the eight-men and four-women jury of the sex-trafficking and racketeering charges that could have seen the 55-year-old Combs in prison for the rest of his life, the 135 months sentence recommended earlier this week from prosecutors equals just over 11 years. Having failed earlier this week to get a new trial or an acquittal, Diddy’s 10-lawyer deep defense team have asked for just 14 months, including time already served, for their client — which if granted in Friday’s daylong hearing could see Combs free before Christmas.
In that vein, and perhaps aiming to get the attention of a certain audience of one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Combs says Thursday: “I lost my way. I got lost in my journey. Lost in the drugs and the excess. My downfall was rooted in my selfishness. I have been humbled and broken to my core. Jail is designed to break you mentally, physically and spiritually. Over the past year there have been so many times that I wanted to give up. There have been some days I thought I would be better off dead. The old me died in jail and a new version of me was reborn.”
“I can’t change the past, but I can change the future,” he goes on to inform Judge Subramanian. “I know that God put me here to transform me. Since incarceration, I have gone through a spiritual reset. I’m on a journey that will take time and hard work.”
Both the U.S. Attorney’s office for the South District of New York and the Marc Agnifilo- and Teny Geragos-led defense are basing their widely divergent recommendations on the federal sentencing guidelines – – which have a maximum sentence of 10 years for each of the counts Combs was found guilty of.
To that, the defense took one last swing today at convincing Judge Subramanian to go easy on their guy
“Instead of accepting the verdict and advocating a reasonable sentence, the government has gone to extreme lengths to try to justify a draconian sentence, particularly for a 55-year-old man,” Combs’ crew said in a reply Thursday to the feds’ sentencing recommendations. “Instead of addressing the conduct for which Mr. Combs was convicted, the government has devoted 161 pages to rehashing evidence rejected by the jury and concocting far-fetched legal arguments to try to jack up the guidelines range to an absurd 360-life level—as if he had been convicted not only of the acquitted charges, but also other uncharged offenses.”
With some strong victims’ impact statements, including from Ventura (“Nothing about this story is great, modern, or loving—this was a horrific decade of my life stained by abuse, violence, forced sex, and degradation”) in the filings from the once Maurene Comey-led prosecution, Friday at NYC’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse is expected not just be packed with arguments from the lawyers on both sides but Combs himself. Additionally, both the feds and the defense have lined up several witness of a personal and professional nature to back up their POVs.
In the end, unless Donald Trump comes through with that much whispered presidential pardon, it will all come down to the Joe Biden-appointed Judge Subramanian and what he hears, believes and decides — at least until the appeals start.
