Sean Combs, the fallen hip-hop mogul, was sentenced on Friday to more than four years in prison for prostitution-related offenses, in a case that drew global attention for its lurid accounts of violence and fetishistic sex marathons.
Judge Arun Subramanian, who was overseeing the case, said in delivering the sentence of 50 months that a substantial sentence was required “to send a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence against women is met with real accountability.”
Mr. Combs’s lawyers had argued that he was at most a “john” in hiring prostitutes, and that the sex involved was consensual. Judge Subramanian addressed those arguments directly.
“You were no john,” he told Mr. Combs. “You were more than that, even if your currency was satisfying your sexual desires instead of money. But the coercion was the same, if not worse.”
Mr. Combs’s lawyers had argued for a far lighter sentence — no more than 14 months — after a jury acquitted him of the most serious charges he had faced, of trafficking two former girlfriends for sex and running a racketeering conspiracy responsible for crimes spanning two decades. The government had requested a sentence of more than 11 years.
At his trial, Mr. Combs was convicted on two lesser counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, charges related to travel arrangements he made for sexual encounters between his girlfriends and hired male escorts, known as “freak-offs” and “hotel nights.” Two of those women — Casandra Ventura, who is known as the singer Cassie, and another former girlfriend who used the pseudonym Jane — testified at length about feeling violated by the encounters.
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