On the eve of his sentencing, the music industry figure addressed a judicial authority on Thursday that he is a new man after understanding that he was "broken to my core" and wondering at times if he was better off dead.
The 55-year-old Combs, expressed in a letter to Judge Arun Subramanian saying that with his sober mental state after a annual detention period, he can see how deteriorated he had become before his autumn detention in a case that led to his judicial determination on two sex trade charges. His judgment session will start on weekend eve.
"During the previous twelve months there have been so many times that I wanted to quit. There have been some days I thought I would be preferable deceased. The former identity died in jail and a changed persona of me was revived. Prison will change you or end you – I choose to live," he said.
A legal tribunal in midsummer found not guilty Combs on sex-trafficking and organized crime charges, meaning he would avoid a permanent incarceration. The sex trade offenses each carry a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.
His legal team say he should be released this thirty-day period, arguing his twelve months incarcerated has been enough of a penalty, while state lawyers want at least 11 years in prison.
Combs expressed that the recent biennial period had been the hardest of his life, "and I have no one to blame for my current reality and situation but myself."
"In my life, I have made many mistakes, but I am no longer escaping them," he wrote. "I profoundly apologize for the suffering I created, but I understand that the basic expressions 'I'm sorry' will never be good enough as these words alone cannot remove the hurt from the past."
Combs apologized for striking, striking with feet and pulling his then girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura at a Southern California lodging in 2016 – an violent incident captured on security-camera footage shown to court members repeatedly during his two-month trial.
"The visual memories of me harming Cassie repeatedly appear in my head daily," Combs wrote. "I entirely lost rationality. I was entirely incorrect for putting my hands on the woman that I loved. I'm sorry for that and eternally regretful."
Combs also apologized to a woman who testified under the pseudonym Jane, saying that "following her court statement, I realized that I hurt her. For this I am deeply sorry."
Combs wrote that "the regret, the sorrow, the remorse, the letdown, the shame" from his behavior has made it "so hard for me to forgive myself."
"It resembles a profound injury that leaves an disfiguring reminder," he said. "I strayed from my path. I got lost in my journey. Overwhelmed by narcotics and extravagance. My downfall was rooted in my selfishness."
In prison, Combs said, he has been perusing, composing, working out and teaching a forty-two-day class to other prisoners, Business Insights with Diddy, imparting his commercial knowledge, as well as acquired knowledge from his errors and failures.
He is also involved in therapy, he said, to address his former narcotics dependency and temper problems. He is substance-free for the first time in 25 years and is pledged to working "to avoid similar wrongdoings in future," he wrote.
Combs told the judicial officer that he was pleading for compassion, not only for his individual self but for his multiple offspring and his 84-year-old mother, for whom he had been the chief provider. While incarcerated, he said, he failed to attend school celebrations and academic culminations and critical parts of his toddler's growth.
"As I write you this letter, I am scared to death. Scared to spend another second away from my mother and my children," Combs wrote. "Wealth and celebrity no longer matter. My family represents ultimate priority."
He said the circumstances of imprisonment at a Brooklyn federal jail are "inhumane," writing that he is detained in an area with multiple detainees, with no windows, poor ventilation, a broken washing machine and water that they boil before drinking.
Combs pledged to never commit a crime again, telling the judge that since he has been in jail he has gone through a "spiritual reset."
Rather than establish him as a cautionary tale with a prolonged incarceration, Combs pleaded with the judicial authority to "make me an example of what a person can do if afforded a second chance."
"If you allow me to go home to my family, I swear I will not fail you and I will create pride," he wrote.
