Martha Stewart’s convictions, and the charges against her, have raised a couple of questions in my mind.
Say she had been charged with, and found NOT guilty of, insider trading. Is there any conceivable way she could have been convicted of the other charges related to covering up the act?
Can anyone who is charged with a crime, any crime, be convicted of perjury if they deny committing the crime on the witness stand and are convicted anyway?
I’ve read somewhere, possibly on the SDMB, that a guilty verdict doesn’t prove whether or not one did something, but that one was found guilty of doing something. 
Of course I do remember things that probebly never happened. Like that wild night with Martha.
Peace,
mangeorge
I asked this question on this thread:
If you look at reply number 15 (where I asked the question, and then 16 and 20 you might get your answer.
V
If this weren’t true, how could a civil trial find a different verdict thal the criminal trial? Otherwise the first verdict would prove the second.
Would it not be the case that if you were found guilty in a criminal trial that would make it rather certain that you would be found liable in a civil trial (assuming we’re talking about a tort that directly related to the crime)? I think you were thinking about the OJ Simpson situation where he was found not guilty in a criminal trial but liable in a civil case. That combination is easy to understand.
Yes. I followed a case where a man was charged with rape and with intimidating the witness (the woman he raped) and tampering with evidence. He was found not guilty of the rape, but guilty of the other charges related to covering up the rape. He got felony time out of it. At the time there was much discussion in the papers of the irony of his legal situation and comparison to other similar cases.
Ouch! Ouch!
(scrubbing my brain with steel wool to banish the image)
martha stewart was not charged with, let alone convicted of, insider trading. she was convicted of charges–variations of obstruction of justice–relating to the investigation of the insider trading charges. in effect, she was convicted of lying about what she had done, not the original act itelf (which she continues to contend she didn’t do).
http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/05/news/companies/martha_verdict/?cnn=yes
Hoping to avoid the cigar-cutter penalty, here’s my understanding of the Crimes of Martha. I am by no means an expert, but I did have a SEC compliance role for a former employer. I know a little, but, IANAL.
Bancovic is (was) her advisor in financial matters, and she pays (paid) him for his advice. She probably followed his advice on a daily basis. None of what she did on the Imclone trade really edged into criminal prosecution territory, which is why she wasn’t charged with insider trading.
When the investigation started, she could have said “Oh, Imclone? Yes, I sold it. On the advice of my broker. No I don’t recall the exact reason, but my assistant may have that call recorded. Oh, pooh, that was non-public information? Well, I didn’t know that at the time, I just followed his advice.”
If she had said something similar, she most likely would have faced a civil penalty and paid a fine and disgorgement. Maybe even less. She had a perfectly good reason for her actions. This would have cast enough doubt that proving she knew she was violating securities laws willfully would have been very difficult, if not impossible.
That’s not what she did. She lied and tried to conceal and destroy evidence. That was the criminal action, that was what she got convicted of.
Think of it: Watergate was about not the break-in, but the coverup. Whitewater: same thing. The law doesn’t allow you to destroy evidence that has a bearing on a criminal investigation even if you never really committed a crime in the first place.
Another example (I am edging out of my expertise here, again, IANAL): A man attacks me in a darkened alley, and I fatally stab him with a knife. There will be an investigation of his death. If I throw the knife off a bridge and bribe a witness to lie about the incident, that’s (at least?) two crimes. Never mind the fact that the death could justified as self-defense.
Hey, **Rico **, you ought to see photos of Martha when she was younger and working as a model. The woman had nice legs.
IANAL, but I am fairly well-read and it is my understanding that part of the reason that a civil trial and a criminal trial on the same “crime” may get different verdicts is because of different standards for proof. The OJ Simpson criminal trial required that proof be beyond reasonable doubt and the defence was able to assemble reasonable doubt. The civil trial was the preponderance of the evidence (a much lower standard).
Paperbackwriter essentially has it. Instead of saying, “I sold the stock and didn’t realize it was insider trading at the time,” Martha concocted a story about having a stop order on the stock. She compounded this by sticking to the story when asked by the SEC investigators (if she had merely said it to the public, but told the truth later to the investigators, she would have been dealt with less harshly). That was the basis for the perjury charge, not any public statement she made to the public.
There are cases where a prosecutor went after people for perjury for saying “I’m innocent” to a cop. There are rulings, however, that usually limit this to cases where the person is under oath. Martha can say “I’m innocent,” until she is sworn in. Then she must tell the truth, or plead the fifth amendment.
She would have been better off if she did either. She would have been hit with a fine for insider trading, but probably no jail time. Unfortunately, most people believe that it’s a crime to admit you made a mistake*, so once she created the story for public consumption, her ego prevented her from admitting she wasn’t telling the truth.
*Despite the fact that admitting a mistake makes you more admirable in most people’s eyes. It would have been great PR if Martha had told the truth to the Feds and made a public statement, that “I panicked and tried to make up a story. It was stupid and wrong and I’m willing to make amends.”
Technical point: Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to SEC investigators. She was not convicted of perjury, which is lying under oath.