(NewsNation) —Sean “Diddy” Combs will appear in court Thursday morning as his attorneys are set to argue for his acquittal or retrial on a pair of prostitution-related charges.

The hearing comes a week before Combs is set to be sentenced by Judge Arun Subramanian, who presided over his criminal trial this summer. 

“This is their last-ditch effort before the sentencing to try to get [Combs] out in terms of either reversing the conviction or getting a new trial,” Tre Lovell, an entertainment attorney, told NewsNation. 

They will use this hearing to argue that the Mann Act was improperly charged and that the facts don’t fit the elements, he said. 

Combs has spent nearly 13 months in jail after a jury convicted him in July on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution under the Mann Act, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He was acquitted of the more serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.

The music producer is set to be sentenced Oct. 3. 

“It’s a tough argument because it was commercial in the sense that he paid for the sex workers to come over. You don’t have to be the one engaging in sex to be guilty of prostitution,” Lovell said. 

Federal prosecutors have argued that Combs doesn’t deserve a new trial or to be acquitted because “there was more than sufficient basis” for the guilty verdict.  

Defense attorneys have made several attempts to free Combs since his conviction, but each request was denied by Subramanian. 

They are likely now looking at preserving motions for appeal, including motions for a new trial and motions for a judgment of acquittal, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said. 

“I don’t think that those motions have any chance of success, but we know that they’re looking at a potential appeal down the road, and even if he gets time served, he may appeal this conviction again,” Rahmani told NewsNation.

The arguments made on Thursday are really “teeing up for appeal more than any real chance of success,” Rahmani said. 

Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest in September last year.