Sean Diddy Combs weeps in courtroom as defense screens emotional video ahead of sentencing, prosecutors push for lengthy prison term

Sean “Diddy” Combs sobbed as his legal team played a documentary-style video at his federal sentencing hearing, an effort to highlight his family life, philanthropy and business work as prosecutors pressed the judge for more than a decade behind bars for convictions tied to so-called “freak-off” parties.

According to CBC News website, the video, filed with the court as “Exhibit 84” and shown in full during the hearing, intercuts home footage of Combs with clips of charity appearances, motivational talks and short messages from family members praising him as a mentor and father. As the montage played, Combs sat at the defense table, head in his hands, and at times appeared to weep, according to reporters in the courtroom.

Combs’ defense team is working to present him in a more positive light than the image depicted in the video showing him physically assaulting his former girlfriend, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura.


“It was really hard to look away from the ugliness,” France said, adding that the defense team is “fully aware” that the video of the 2016 incident “paints a really horrible picture of him.”

“I know how hard it was to stand up here and tell me those things, but it’s important for me to hear,” he said.

US District Judge Arun Subramanian, who will decide Combs’ fate, said he sees no reason at this point to depart from the federal sentencing guidelines, which place an advisory range of roughly 70 to 87 months, just under six years to a little over seven years, for the offenses at issue. The judge also said he would apply a sentencing enhancement related to coercion after overruling a defense objection, a development that can push a guidelines sentence higher.

According to the Washington Post website, Judge Subramanian further questioned whether Combs has shown true acceptance of responsibility for the conduct that led to his convictions, saying the narrative advanced by the defense “is flatly inconsistent with reality and any acceptance of responsibility.”

Federal prosecutors urged the judge to impose a lengthy sentence. They argued Combs used violence, manipulation and drugs to coerce women into participating in sexual encounters with paid escorts, conduct they say spanned many years and left victims scared. Prosecutors also criticized defense efforts to repair Combs’ image, telling the court that his recent scheduling of public appearances before sentencing was “the height of hubris.”