Sean Combs
Credit: X/@Diddy
New York: Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge's decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.
Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L Carter of US District Court in Manhattan ordered that Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.
In their appeal to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government's argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.
The lawyers, Alexandra A E Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Combs' decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government's custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.
"Mr. Combs is presumed innocent," they wrote in the filing. "He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses."
Prosecutors have accused Combs of running a "criminal enterprise" that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into "highly orchestrated" sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.
Combs' lawyers have vehemently denied the charges, saying that the hip-hop mogul is "an imperfect person but he is not a criminal." They have argued that the sexual encounters, known as freak-offs, involved only consenting adults.
The defense went to great lengths to try to convince the district court judge that Combs should be released ahead of his trial. His lawyers proposed a $50 million bond, secured by his home in Miami Beach, and a team of private security officers who would monitor him at all hours, limiting visitors to an approved list.
But Carter sided with prosecutors, who argued that Combs' history of violence and evidence of obstruction in the case made his release too risky. As a key example, the prosecution cited Combs' contact with witnesses who had been served with grand jury subpoenas.
"Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructer," one of the prosecutors, Emily A Johnson, said in a bail hearing last month.
In their appeal, Combs' lawyers wrote that there was no evidence of any threats or intimidation toward the grand jury witnesses, saying that in one of the cases, a woman contacted Combs to tell him she was a witness. The lawyers said he complied when they told him not to communicate with her anymore.
"The witness contacts the government cited were minimally relevant or entirely innocuous," the lawyers wrote.
Inside the Metropolitan Detention Center, Combs has been living in a special housing unit where high-profile inmates are often held. One of the roommates in his unit has been Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul who is appealing his fraud conviction. (Combs' appellate lawyers are also overseeing Bankman-Fried's appeal.)
Under the proposal for release submitted by his lawyers, Combs agreed to live under highly restricted conditions, with no phones, no access to the internet and video monitoring if necessary. Carter had not been persuaded that the proposal would prevent obstruction, saying in the hearing that Combs could still operate through employees, "through even coded messages if necessary."
In their appeal, his lawyers countered that there was no evidence that Combs had used coded messages. "There is zero risk of Mr. Combs using such code under monitoring," they wrote in a footnote. "How would any visitor even know how to interpret the supposed 'code'?"