Sean “Diddy” Combs took his fight over his 50-month prison sentence to a federal appeals court Thursday (April 9), and left with no immediate answer but plenty of indication that the three-judge panel is wrestling with something genuinely difficult.
The hearing at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ran close to 80 minutes, far longer than the 10 minutes originally scheduled per side, with all three judges pressing both attorneys throughout. Combs was not present. At the end of the session, Circuit Judge William J. Nardini called it “an exceptionally difficult case” presenting legal questions “not only for this court, but apparently for any federal court of appeals in the country.”
The central issue is what lawyers call “acquitted conduct,” the practice of allowing sentencing judges to consider evidence tied to charges a jury has already rejected. Combs was convicted in July 2025 on two counts of interstate prostitution under the federal Mann Act. He was acquitted of the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, which could have carried a life sentence. Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced him to 50 months last fall.
Combs’ appellate attorney Alexandra Shapiro argued that Subramanian’s sentence effectively punished her client for the charges the jury threw out. “Their unanimous verdict was not guilty on the most serious charges,” Shapiro told the panel. “The jury did not authorize punishment for sex trafficking or conspiracy, but that’s what drove the sentence here. This was the highest sentence ever for this type of charge.”
Her argument is rooted in a 2024 update to federal sentencing guidelines issued by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which instructed courts to be more cautious about using acquitted conduct when calculating sentences, saying that “not guilty means not guilty.” Shapiro argued Subramanian applied a coercion enhancement to the sentencing calculation that had no basis given the jury’s acquittals on the charges where coercion was central. She pointed to the judge’s own written statement of reasons as evidence: “If you read his statement of reasons, he simply says, I’m only sentencing you for the conduct you were convicted of. And then he goes on to discuss all of the acquitted conduct.”
The judges pushed back hard on both sides. Judge Nardini interrupted Shapiro early in her argument, suggesting the court might not even be able to reach the issue on procedural grounds. Judge Sarah A.L. Merriam noted that Subramanian had acknowledged the acquittals at sentencing and asked why that wasn’t sufficient. Shapiro called the acknowledgment “make-weight,” prompting a sharp rebuke from Nardini: “You mean he didn’t mean it? Or he wasn’t thinking it? What does ‘make-weight’ mean? That’s a rather disparaging characterization.”
Prosecutors faced equally pointed questioning. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik argued Subramanian applied the new guidelines correctly, and that the conduct at issue was not acquitted conduct but “admitted conduct,” since Combs’ defense team had openly acknowledged physical abuse during trial. “The defendant admitted from the outset of the trial that the defendant engaged in horrific domestic violence. All of that conduct was admitted,” she said.
But Judge M. Miller Baker challenged that framing directly. “Why shouldn’t we hold you to the way you prosecuted the case?” he asked. “You went to the jury and said this man did all these terrible things for purposes of the RICO conspiracy, for purposes of sex trafficking, and they acquitted him. And now you want us to rely on all this acquitted conduct that was presumably rejected?” Baker had earlier described the Mann Act charges as a “sideshow” to the RICO case during trial.
Slavik also argued that even if the court found Subramanian made an error, it should be considered harmless, because the judge had stated he would have imposed the same 50-month sentence regardless of the acquitted conduct issue. The defense disputed that reading of the record.
Combs is currently serving his sentence at a low-security federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, with a scheduled release date of April 15, 2028. His appeal has been granted expedited status, which should result in a faster decision than the year or more that federal appeals typically take. The Second Circuit can uphold the conviction and sentence, order a new sentencing hearing, or potentially overturn the conviction. No timeline was given for a ruling.
Thursday’s hearing focused entirely on sentencing. Combs is separately appealing his underlying convictions, including an argument that the “freak offs” at the core of the case were protected by the First Amendment as amateur pornographic filmmaking. That argument faces a much steeper climb, as appeals courts are far less likely to overturn a jury’s verdict than a judge’s ruling.
