Sean “Diddy” Combs was sentenced Friday to four years and two months in prison for transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters, capping a sordid federal case that featured harrowing testimony and ended in a forceful reckoning for one of the most popular figures in hip-hop.

Combs, 55, was also fined half a million dollars. Since Combs has served a year in jail already, this sentence means he would be released in about three years. His lawyers wanted him freed immediately and said the time behind bars has already forced his remorse and sobriety.

He was convicted in July flying his girlfriends and male sex workers around the country to engage in drug-fueled sexual encounters, a practice that happened over many years and in different locations. However, he was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have put him behind bars for life.

“Why did it happen so long?” U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian asked as he handed down the sentence. “Because you had the power and the resources to keep it going, and because you weren’t caught.”

In a final word before sentencing, Combs called his years of behaviour “disgusting, shameful” and “sick,” while apologizing to the people he hurt physically and mentally, as well as his children in the audience. He said his acts of domestic violence are a burden he will have to carry for the rest of his life.

His defence lawyers played an 11-minute video in court Friday portraying Combs’ family life, career and philanthropy before his arrest. At one point during the video, Combs put a hand on his face and began to cry, his shoulders at times heaving.

His nearly two-month trial in a federal court in Manhattan featured testimony from women who said Combs beat, threatened, sexually assaulted and blackmailed them. Prosecutor Christy Slavik told the judge that sparing Combs serious prison time would excuse years of violence.

“It’s a case about a man who did horrible things to real people to satisfy his own sexual gratification,” she said. “He didn’t need the money. His currency was control.”

Combs was convicted under the Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for prostitution. Defence attorney Jason Driscoll argued the law was misapplied.

Slavik also blasted Combs for allegedly booking speaking gig in South Florida next week, calling it “the height of hubris.” Defence lawyer Xavier Donaldson later said the proposed community events were meant to show what the business mogul could be doing “if the court let Mr. Combs out.”

Several of Combs children pleaded with him for leniency.

His daughters, Chance and D’Lila Combs, cried as they spoke, with D’Lila saying she feared losing her father after the death of their mother, Kim Porter, in 2018. Six of Combs’ seven children addressed the judge.

“Please, your honour, please,” D’Lila said through tears, “give our family the chance to heal together, to rebuild, to change, to move forward, not as a headline, but as human beings.”

Outside the courthouse, journalists and onlookers swarmed the sidewalks as TV crews stood in a long row across the street, echoing scenes from Combs’ trial.

During testimony at the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura told jurors that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” sex with strangers hundreds of times during their decade-long relationship. Jurors saw video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.

Another woman, identified as “Jane,” testified she was pressured into sex with male workers during drug-fuelled “hotel nights” while Combs watched and sometimes filmed.

The only accuser scheduled to speak Friday, a former assistant known as “Mia,” withdrew after defence objections. She has accused Combs of raping her in 2010 and asked the judge for a sentence that reflects “the ongoing danger my abuser poses.”

Prosecutors also introduced testimony at the trial about other alleged violence. One of Cassie’s friends said Combs dangled her from 17th-floor balcony. Rapper Kid Cudi said Combs broke into his home after learning he was dating Cassie.

Another lawyer for Combs, Brian Steel, urged the judge to see the case through the prism of the “untreated trauma” and “ferocious drug addiction” that he says contributed to the hip-hop mogul’s misconduct.

“His good outweighs his bad, by far,” Steel said.

In a letter to the judge Thursday, Combs wrote: “The old me died in jail and a new version of me was reborn,” promising he would never commit another crime.

Cassie, in her own letter, described him as an abuser who “will always be the same cruel, power-hungry, manipulative man that he is.”

At a hearing last week, Combs told his mother and children he was “getting closer to going home.” (AP)

Update news