Sean “Diddy” Combs spent Christmas morning at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey. But if his lawyers had their way, he would have been home for dinner.
Days before the holiday, on Dec. 23, Combs’ legal team made a last-minute push in federal appeals court, asking for his immediate release. Their argument was blunt: in their view, the 56-year-old music mogul is being held unlawfully and shouldn’t still be behind bars.
At first glance, the timing felt like wishful thinking. Appeals don’t move quickly, emergency relief is rare, and Christmas isn’t known for surprise court orders.
Still, this wasn’t a random stunt.
Combs’ lawyers believed they saw a narrow opening — and they went for it.
That opening comes down to the unusual way his case ended.
In July, a federal jury acquitted Combs of the most serious charges he faced: racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Those allegations carried the heaviest potential penalties and dominated the trial. The jury rejected them.
What remained were two convictions for transportation for the purpose of engaging in prostitution — serious offenses, but a far cry from the sweeping criminal enterprise prosecutors originally laid out.
That distinction is everything.
In sentencing filings, Combs’ lawyers argued that convictions like these usually lead to far shorter prison terms. They pushed for a sentence closer to 14 or 15 months, pointing to what they described as similar cases and guideline ranges. Instead, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian imposed a 50-month sentence — more than four years — leaning heavily on evidence of violent and coercive conduct presented at trial.
The catch, according to the defense, is that the jury had already cleared Combs of the charges tied to that conduct.
This is where the appeal draws its leverage.
In a filing submitted this week, appellate attorney Alexandra Shapiro argued that the judge effectively acted as a “thirteenth juror,” sentencing Combs as if he had been convicted of sex trafficking anyway, despite the jury’s not-guilty verdicts.
The defense claims that relying so heavily on acquitted conduct crosses a constitutional line and makes the 50-month sentence “substantively unreasonable” compared with other Mann Act transportation cases. The ask is straightforward: undo the sentence and release Combs on bond while the appeal plays out.
It’s a high-risk play, but it’s not hard to see the logic. Sentencing judges have wide discretion, but appellate courts do step in when they believe that discretion has gone too far. That’s the bet Combs’ team is making.
For now, the system hasn’t budged.
As of Christmas Day, no emergency order has been issued, and Combs remains in custody while his appeal moves through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
So instead of spending the holiday at his Star Island mansion, Combs remained at Fort Dix, a low-security federal prison in New Jersey. It’s considered less severe than the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he was previously held, but it is still prison.
According to Bureau of Prisons projections, Combs’ current release date sits in spring 2028.
Unless the appeal gains traction, this was never going to be his last Christmas inside — even if his lawyers believed this one was worth the shot.
