Martha Stewart finds out today if she’s going to a federal prison. Supposedly she wants to speak to the judge on her own behalf – an idea the mortifies her lawyers. The cable news talking heads have pegged the most likely sentence to be 10 to 16 months for lying about a stock sale. I’m sure that CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews are gearing up for 24/7 coverage of the verdict and the aftermath.
Looks like a good weekend to read a book…
Update: Alan Dershowitz, in The Los Angeles Times (Registration required), says Martha Stewart is almost certainly going to prison because of her lawyers.
Update 2: Just before her sentence was pronounced, Stewart asked the judge to “remember all the good I have done.” Oh, that’s just too rich. Expect to see that quote tagged to the jailbird for a long time.
Final Score – 5 months in prison, 5 months home detention, $30,000 fine.
Where’d you see that her idea to talk to the judge mortifies her lawyers?
Having the Defendant do this at sentencing — it’s called allocution — is very common. I wonder why they don’t want her to do that in this case, if that’s true.
CNN is reporting that she got hit with Five months in prison, two years probation.
Along with $30,000 in fines. However she’s not off to jail straight away.
5 months prison, 5 months home confinement at one of her mansions, and 2 years probation.
Not nearly enough punishment.
Interesting. The time should fly by. She’ll be busy redecorating the wardens office anyway. $30,000 as a fine is nothing to her. That’s a weekend shopping trip.
She’ll have Club Fed so spiffy, that they will hate to see her go. Just think of the Thanksgiving episode of Martha Stewart Living, “Away from home on the holidays? You can still have that traditional Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back after this movie trailer for “ConAir” playing this evening in the recreation room.”
I think it’s a travesty that this case was brought at all, but there’s no way she belongs in prison. What bugs me most is that this is still being reported as if this case were about insider trading. Are the press stupid, dishonest, or both?
The guy who stole my purse got less time in jail.
It ain’t right. Home confinement, well, ok, but geez.
Please allow me to disabuse you of the myth about Club Fed. Martha will reside in a minimum security federal penitentiary with a wide range of other convicted felons. She will be required to work every day as some job – the facilities are minimally staffed as the prisoners do pretty much all of the work except guarding themselves. And although it’s a minimum security facility – it’s a transition point for those prisoners in stronger security prisons whose sentences are ending. So she’ll be living and working with murderers, drug dealers, and who knows what else kind of felons. Five months, although too short a sentence, imho, will seem like an eternity to a woman like Martha Stewart.
My first guess, last night, was that she’d get probation (maximum amount) but a huge fine. Or, huge to everyone else, at least.
Then, I heard a fellow from the Federal Prosecutor’s office commenting on FOX last evening and from his general tone and focus, it seems that there’s a point to be made by the judge in sending Stewart to SOME prison time. In addition to a fine.
So, my guess is that she’ll get some prison time but not the maximum, some probation and a fine. That way, they can preserve the “maximum jail time” sentencing ‘award’ to people who engage in planned and repetitive cheating.
If not, then there is just no justice left — I still think that Stewart deserves probation and a fine, because the experience so far seems to have levied adequate “punishment” for the dishonesty that she engaged in. I think she’s already paid her price, is what I’m saying, to society, what with the trial and the loss of business, which appears to have been moreorless permanent. Because she’ll never regain the same social status (and, therefore, business positioning) that she had prior to exposure of wrongdoing.
Spoons,
I’m with you. And the press is all of the above. I think this case was more about making an example of Martha Stewart than anything else.
Spoons,
I am also with you. She was convicted of obstructing justice for a crime that was never charged – insider trading. She was railroaded.
Back now from a week in the sun . . .
The one statement that glared at me over all this was when Martha mentioned that over 200 of her company’s employees were out of a job as a result of the case. Now, maybe I’m not seeing the whole picture, but who exactly did she hurt so badly, if she indeed did do all the things of which she’s accused, against over 200 people trying to find a new way to support their families?
I suppose in the face of other high-profile criminal cases, I’m perplexed as to why some celebrities get a “free pass” while others are crucified, but the general public falls to neither extreme. “Equality under the law” is still the elusive holy grail, it seems.