Reporters who cover trials don’t get much downtime. But there are moments, between all the watching and writing, for some recreational odds-laying.
Like anyone else glued to a big case, we make predictions. How long will deliberations go? Guilty or not guilty? And the sentence — time served? More? Much more?
A judge sentenced Sean “Diddy” Combs on Friday to four years in prison. I thought the fallen rap entrepreneur would get much more: 10 years.
I thought Combs would get five years for each of the two girlfriends he caused to cross state lines so he could pleasure himself while they had sex with male escorts. These were the so-called “freak offs,” held sometimes weekly, over the course of 15 years at hotel suites in Manhattan, Miami, and Los Angeles.
As a veteran New York City legal reporter, I had watched every day of the trial’s seven weeks of testimony and was in the courtroom as the judge upbraided Combs to his face on sentencing day.
“A history of good works can’t wash away the record in this case, which showed that you abused the power and control that you had over the lives of women you professed to love dearly,” US District Judge Arun Subramanian told Combs.
Federal judges don’t tend to rage on the bench, and the “Diddy judge” is calmer than many.
But there was a restrained anger in what the judge said during sentencing, especially in directly addressing Combs. It led many online observers to predict the hammer was coming down.
“He’s not walking away from this,” and “It’s over,” were common real-time reactions. “The judge’s tone is brutal,” one Redditor on the r/PopCultureChat remarked. “Sounds like he’s going max.”
“You abused them physically, emotionally, and psychologically,” Subramanian told Combs, referring to R&B artist Cassie Ventura, who dated the former rap mogul from 2007 to 2018, and “Jane,” his girlfriend from 2021 to 2024, who testified under a pseudonym.
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Combs knew both women were vulnerable, Subramanian said at sentencing.
Ventura testified that she was 20 years old when Combs forced her into opioid addiction, the judge noted. Trial testimony and photographs described, by my own count, 14 separate instances when Combs brutally beat her.
And Jane, according to prosecutors, had suffered a pitiable history of abuse and rape when Combs met her.
“These acts of sexual violence are unfortunately commonplace,” the judge told Combs on Friday. “A substantial sentence must be given to send a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence against women is met with real accountability.”
The judge also addressed his duty to keep society safe — from Combs.
“The court is not assured that if released, these crimes will not be committed again,” Subramanian said. “A meaningful sentence is necessary to protect the pubic from further crimes.”
As proof, the judge reminded Combs of what happened in May 2024. That’s when Combs apologized on Instagram for beating Ventura at the InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles, posting that he was “committed to being a better man.”
One month after that post, “you kicked down five doors in Jane’s home,” the judge told Combs, describing an episode from Los Angeles in June 2024.
During an extended, overnight attack, Combs lifted Jane off the floor by her neck in a chokehold, punched and kicked her, dragged her by the hair, and slapped her “so hard that she fell down,” the judge continued. “Jane creditably testified to those things.”
Subramanian came the closest to outright anger when he described what happened next, when Combs told Jane to cover her bruises with makeup, suit up in lingerie, and have sex with an escort.
It was one of the most remarkable displays from the bench that I’ve seen in two decades of covering sentencings.
“According to her, you said the following: ‘Take this fucking pill,'” Subramanian told Combs from the bench, reading from paperwork.
“‘You’re not going to ruin my fucking night. You better go out there,” the judge said, still reading, emphasizing each expletive.
“‘You’re not going to ruin my fucking night. Get out there. Suck his dick. Fuck him. I don’t care. Just — you’re not going to ruin my fucking night.'”
Then the judge recounted what Jane said Combs told her next. For context, Combs knew, on that evening, that the feds were investigating him. They’d been to his three homes, executing search warrants, seizing firearms and drugs.
“You asked Jane, mockingly, ‘Is this coercion?'” Jane had told the jury that Combs’ face was inches from her own when he asked this.
Subramanian had shown similar glimpses of anger prior to sentencing when he criticized many of the defense attorneys’ claims and legal tactics, like when they called the Ventura-Combs relationship a “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll story.”
More judicial anger seemed to simmer after the defense called Combs a constitutionally-protected “amateur pornographer,” and when they insisted the escorts were paid for time, not sex, a claim that the judge on Friday called “inconsistent with both reality and any acceptance of responsibility.”
The verdict, finding Combs guilty only of the two transporting for prostitution counts, had been a reasonable one.
Prosecutors had overreached on RICO. And the evidence of sex trafficking could have gone either way. A decade of text messages had shown the victims willingly participating in the freak offs, if only to please Combs or appease him. Only in hindsight, after leaving Combs, were they able to describe to a jury the full extent of his manipulation and their own humiliation.
Even after these acquittals, the judge could have given Combs as much as 20 years, assigning the 10-year maximum to each of the convicted prostitution counts and running them consecutively.
Hearing what sounded like anger from the bench — hearing Subramanian decry the “profound impact” on both women, and the “devastation” it caused in their lives — my best guess was that the judge would impose half that maximum, 10 years. Up until the moment he didn’t.
