The Second Circuit grilled prosecutors and Sean Combs's defense over whether acquitted racketeering conduct inflated his 50-month Mann Act sentence, with no ruling issued.
A Second Circuit panel spent nearly two hours at oral argument on April 9 questioning whether Judge Arun Subramanian improperly inflated Sean Combs's 50-month sentence by relying on conduct for which a jury acquitted him [1]. The panel heard from both defense counsel and federal prosecutors but issued no ruling from the bench [1].
Combs was convicted on Mann Act charges and acquitted on racketeering and sex-trafficking counts in the underlying trial in the Southern District of New York [1]. Judge Subramanian sentenced him to 50 months after the Mann Act convictions [1]. Defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro argued on appeal that the district court's sentence was driven upward by the acquitted conduct, in violation of both fairness principles and the Sentencing Commission's 2024 guidelines amendment that bars use of acquitted conduct in guideline range calculations [1]. Prosecutors, represented by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, countered that the sentence reflected Combs's documented history of abusing women and was supportable independent of any acquitted counts [1].
The legal question before the panel carries weight beyond this case. The Sentencing Commission's 2024 amendment explicitly prohibits courts from using acquitted conduct to calculate a defendant's guidelines range, but longstanding circuit precedent, rooted in the Supreme Court's 1997 decision in *United States v. Watts*, has permitted sentencing courts to consider acquitted conduct under a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard [1]. The Second Circuit panel must now decide whether the new guidelines amendment displaces that precedent, at least within the guidelines calculation, and whether any error in Combs's sentencing was harmless given the government's alternative justification [1]. Judge William Nardini was among the panel members pressing questions to both sides during the argument [1].
The panel's decision will either reinforce or curtail the practical reach of the Sentencing Commission's 2024 reform, with direct consequences for district courts across the circuit and persuasive weight in other circuits grappling with the same tension [1]. No ruling timeline has been announced. If the Second Circuit vacates the sentence, the case returns to Judge Subramanian for resentencing under clarified instructions [1].