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American rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is facing the possibility of more than 20 years in prison after a high-profile trial where he was accused of serious crimes, on Thursday appealed to the judge overseeing his case for “mercy” and “another chance.”
After two months of testimony and legal arguments in the federal case in New York, jurors dismissed the most serious accusations of sex trafficking and racketeering, thus relieving the 55-year-old of the threat of a life sentence.
Nonetheless, he still confronts a potential sentence of up to 20 years for his convictions on two related prostitution charges.
On Thursday, his attorneys submitted a letter signed by Combs in which he conveyed to Judge Arun Subramanian that he was “scared to death” about being separated from his family and promised he “will never commit a crime again.”
“This has been the hardest 2 years of my life, and I have no one to blame for my current reality and situation but myself,” Combs wrote in the three-and-a-half-page letter.
The former influential figure in hip-hop expressed remorse for physically assaulting Casandra Ventura, his longtime girlfriend, who testified about severe beatings and significant emotional and sexual abuse that he inflicted upon her.
In a prior letter, Ventura said that she had relocated her family out of the New York area due to concerns about “retribution” if Combs were to be released.
He also expressed regret for having “hurt” a woman who testified under the alias Jane, who likewise recounted abuse in heartbreaking detail from their long-term relationship.
Both women claimed that Combs, with the assistance of his staff and close associates, pressured them into participating in so-called “freak-offs”: sexual marathons with hired men that Combs oversaw and sometimes recorded.
Combs did not reference those incidents in the letter.
