Sean Diddy Combs has asked a judge to throw out his guilty verdicts on prostitution-related counts or grant him a new trial, saying such convictions are without precedent.
“This conviction stands alone, but it shouldn’t stand at all,” the Wednesday filing said.
Combs’s lawyers argue that his two felony convictions were a unique misapplication of the federal Mann Act, which bars interstate commerce related to prostitution.
“To our knowledge, Mr Combs is the only person ever convicted of violating the statute for conduct anything like this,” a Wednesday filing from Combs’s legal team said.
Combs, 55, was convicted in a New York federal court of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters.
While he was acquitted of more serious charges, he could still get up to a decade in prison at his sentencing, which is set for October 3.
His lawyers argued that none of the elements normally used for Mann Act convictions, including profiting from sex work or coercion, were present here.
“It is undisputed that he had no commercial motive and that all involved were adults,” the filing said. “The men chose to travel and engage in the activity voluntarily. The verdict confirms the women were not vulnerable or exploited or trafficked or sexually assaulted.”
The lawyers said that Combs, “at most, paid to engage in voyeurism as part of a ‘swingers’ lifestyle” and argued that “does not constitute ‘prostitution’ under a properly limited definition of the statutory term”.
Combs was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, charges that could have put one of hip-hop’s celebrated figures in prison for life.
The new motion asks Judge Arun Subramanian to vacate the jury’s verdict, or to order a new trial whose evidence is limited to matters related to the Mann Act counts, because of “severe spill over prejudice from reams of inflammatory evidence” related to the more serious counts.
Prosecutors insisted during the eight-week trial that Combs had coerced, threatened and sometimes viciously forced two ex-girlfriends to have sex with male sex workers to satisfy his sexual urges. They cited multiple acts of violence he carried out against them as proof that they had no say.
A day earlier, Combs’s team asked the judge to free him on a 50 million dollar bond while he awaits sentencing in October after a jury found him not guilty of the most serious federal charges he faced earlier this month.
His lawyer argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn are dangerous, noting that others convicted of similar prostitution-related offences were typically released before sentencing.
Subramanian previously denied a request that Combs be released on bail while he awaits sentencing, citing a now-infamous video of Combs beating a former girlfriend and photographs showing injuries to another ex-girlfriend.
The judge has not yet ruled on either of this week’s motions.
