Attorneys for Sean “Diddy” Combs say they will continue to fight to have their client released from the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where other high-profile defendants have also been housed.
“I'm not going to let him stay in that jail one day longer than necessary,” defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said Wednesday outside a federal court in New York.
His team wanted Combs placed under house arrest on $50 million bail, but their request was denied.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter said Wednesday that a bail package that would have kept the hip-hop mogul under house arrest at his Star Island mansion in Miami — with security and no access to cellphones, the Internet or women other than his family — was insufficient to free him pending trial.
The facility, which has housed inmates including R. Kelly and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, has a history of violence and poor conditions.
In a letter to the court, Combs' attorneys said comparing him to Kelly and Maxwell — who served time in federal prison in Brooklyn while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges — was unfair.
“Sean Combs has never evaded, avoided, dodged or run away from a challenge in his life. He will not start now,” Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, Combs' attorneys, said in a letter to Carter on Wednesday.
Attorneys said there were major differences between Combs' case and the others because Combs is not charged with child trafficking.
Since March, he has even kept prosecutors informed of all his domestic flights and on Sept. 5 moved into a Manhattan hotel knowing there would likely be an indictment.
Citing past murders and suicides at the facility, Combs' attorneys argued that he should not remain there.
The courts “have recognized that conditions at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center are not suitable for pretrial detention,” Combs’ attorneys argued in court papers.
In a ruling issued in August, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown said allegations about the federal lockup involving “inadequate supervision, rampant assaults, and a lack of sufficient medical care are supported by a growing body of evidence, with certain cases that are irrefutable.” He continued: “Each of the five months preceding this opinion was marred by instances of catastrophic violence at MDC, including two apparent homicides, two gruesome stabbings, and an assault so severe it resulted in a fractured eye socket of the victim.”
The detention center houses about 1,800 inmates.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors have alleged that MDC was the site of sexual assaults by guards on female inmates. In 2016, a federal magistrate was reluctant to send a woman there, citing a report that said there was an “absence of fresh, clean air, a complete absence of sunlight, and an absence of ANY outdoor time and activity.”
Combs has been the subject of a wide-ranging federal investigation since at least the beginning of the year and was arrested in New York on Monday.
On Tuesday, prosecutors unsealed the indictment against Combs, charging him with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation for prostitution. Combs pleaded not guilty and was also denied bail during the hearing.
The indictment alleges that Combs and his associates lured women, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs then allegedly used force, threats of force, coercion and controlled substances to force them to engage in sexual acts with male prostitutes in what Combs refers to as “freak offs.” Combs is accused of giving the women ketamine, ecstasy and GHB to “keep them obedient and docile” during the performances.
The encounters, which prosecutors say sometimes lasted for days, were elaborate productions that Combs organized, directed, masturbated during and often recorded, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege in a detention memo filed with the court that the sexual performances occurred regularly from at least 2009 through this year and that the hotel rooms where they took place often suffered significant damage.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
