By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Despite being found not guilty on the most serious counts at his sex trafficking trial, Sean “Diddy” Combs will spend months awaiting sentencing at a notoriously understaffed and violent Brooklyn jail where the music mogul has lived through nearly ten months of lockdowns and fights.
Combs, 55, has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center since his September 2024 arrest. The facility, which has also held convicted sex traffickers like British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and rhythm and blues singer R. Kelly, is a far cry from the luxurious Los Angeles and Miami mansions Combs called home until last year.
After the verdict was read on Wednesday, Combs’ lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian to release him on $1 million bond ahead of his sentencing, expected to take place by October.
“I understand that you don’t, that Mr. Combs does not want to go back to the MDC,” the judge said. Combs shook his head.
His hopes of returning to one of those homes and the embrace of his family after being cleared of the more serious charges were soon dashed. The judge denied Combs’ request for bail, citing evidence of his violent behavior presented during the trial.
In recent years, MDC has been plagued by persistent staffing shortages, power outages and maggots in inmates’ food. Two weeks after Combs’ arrest, prosecutors announced criminal charges against nine MDC inmates for crimes including assault, attempted murder and murder at the facility in the months before Combs arrived.
In January of last year, a federal judge in Manhattan declined to order a man charged with drug crimes detained pending trial at the MDC, calling the conditions there an “ongoing tragedy.”
Last August, another judge said he would convert an older defendant’s nine-month jail term to home incarceration if he were sent to MDC, citing the jail’s “dangerous, barbaric conditions.”
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which operates MDC, said in a statement it was engaged in “intensive efforts to improve conditions at MDC Brooklyn.” The agency said it confiscated drugs, weapons and other contraband during a multi-day sweep of the jail last October and November.
During the eight-week trial, U.S. Marshals transported Combs to and from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan each day from the facility in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, which has also housed former cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and Luigi Mangione, accused of killing a health insurance executive.
Bankman-Fried has since been moved to a low-security prison in California and is appealing his fraud conviction and 25-year sentence. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.
A jury found Combs not guilty on Wednesday on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, sparing him a potential life sentence, but convicted him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution that could land him in prison for several years. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Combs’ defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said in court on Wednesday that Combs had been housed in “a very difficult part of the MDC” where there have been fights. His lawyer Alexandra Shapiro said in a November 2024 court filing that frequent lockdowns at the facility had impaired Combs’ ability to prepare for trial.
On Wednesday, Combs’ lawyers praised MDC staff, who they said had facilitated their access to him during the trial.
“Despite the terrible conditions at the MDC, I want to thank the good people who work there,” defense lawyer Teny Geragos told reporters after the verdict.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
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