She wasn’t convicted of insider trading (that charge was thrown out); she was convicted of four other crimes, basically for lying and trying to cover up what she did. And it sounds like she won’t do anything close to 20 years. The NY Times says “She is scheduled to be sentenced June 17, and unless her case is overturned on appeal, she faces a punishment of up to 16 months in prison, lawyers who have dealt with the sentencing guidelines said.”
I dunno…
One lady they were interviewing on CNN or something had been convicted for, I think, the same thing said that was exactly where Martha was going. Described it as VERY harsh.
[not an exact quote but best as I remember]"There was one lovely elderly lady, silver hair in lovely bun, in for I don’t remember what, watching her get beat in the head with a telephone receiver for something she said”.[/non-quote]
Claims that any female visitors are treated to full strip searches, INSIDE AND OUT!
Tales of being left to sit in your own ….ok. I’m stopping here.
It sounded really bad.
Anyone who actually paid full attention please feel free to correct or expound upon this.
Well, I suppose having to dine without handmade tea cosies could be considered “harsh” punishment by some.
Said to whom and what did she say? “Granny” could very well have had the foulest mouth around. Both Leona Helmsly and Martha are said to have razor sharp tongues, so I can well imagine that either one of them could say something which would inspire folks to bash 'em in the skull.
You mean a full body cavity search. Not really surprising since folks have been known to smuggle things into prison that way.
Tales? That’s it? No documentation? No investigation? So all we have are allegations that this occured, no evidence. You don’t suppose that this woman could have been making it all up for the sole purpose of being on TV do you? After all, a great many folks hate Martha, and comments which indicate that she’ll be humilated and abused while incarcerated no doubt feed the fetishes of a number of them. Remember, CNN’s the network that ran a bogus story about the US gassing folks in Vietnam and claimed that the Columbia was travelling at 18 times the speed of light when she broke up. Given that this is breaking news, I can well imagine that their fact checking efforts took back seat to getting someone on air who could paint a picture of Martha being reduced to a prison slave.
Please do. I’d like to know the name of the prison where this woman was incarcerated.
You know it’r really odd, I never thought she’d be convicted. Desdpite the fact that I’ve been teasing my wife about it happening for months. I really doubt that Martha’s in any danger of going to FPMITA prison. If I had to guess she’ll spend at most 9 months behind bars.
Personally, I think she did do the insider trading thing and should be convicted for that.
But I have always wondered about the “lying to the authorities” thing. She did NOT lie under oath (since she did not testify). Therefore, she did NOT commit whatever you call that crime*. And I wonder whether we should have the right to say what we want as long as we are not sworn in by a judge.
Have a nice weekend
*Sorry, not a native speaker
These guys are all going down, you can count on it.
Correct me if I am wrong (and I am sure you will), but I don’t think she did anything that any one of us wouldn’t have done.
If I understood the case correctly, she got an unsolicitated phone call from an employee of a well-meaning friend telling her the stock was about to go belly up, and then she did what anyone else would do. She sold the stock. Does one single person reading this think you would not have done the same thing?
I think she might have been wiser to fess up immediately, and say that is what happened and paid the fine.
Don’t get me wrong…I think it is sinful that white collar crime is usually swept under the carpet. I think those Enron assholes should get life in prison.
Plus, I am not even a big Martha Stewart fan. Like many people, I find her somewhat off-putting and arrogant. Still, I think if this had happened to a well-loved personality - Oprah, or Tom Cruise…the verdict might have been something different.
Otto, I have to agree with you. Locally, we’ve got a construction family up for something over 100 counts of bank fraud, building fraud, and similar violations. As an aggregate they seem to have stolen upwards of One Hundred Million dollars. Not to mention the effect of their shoddy, over-priced houses have had on neighboring houses equity values. It really burns me that when these people are convicted (Their lawyer has pled guilty on all counts and is going to be a key prosecution witness - I don’t see them weaseling out.) the expectation is that they’re going to be treated as white collar criminals who aren’t as henious as a bank robber with a poorly written note and no weapon who got a few hundred bucks. In fact, though each count carries a minimum sentence, and the number of counts would seem to mean that conviction would be leaving them behind bars for life, NY apparantly has law capping sentences for white collar crime at 10 years. No matter how many counts, or how much money was stolen.
I have no qualms about Martha Stewart looking at a few years in prison. Let’s face it, too, had she come clean from the beginning, there would have been fines, but nothing more would have happened. She broke the law, and now she’s facing the penalty for it. And, frankly, while I’ve not been following the situation all that closely, the impression I’ve had all along was that her attitude was the next best thing to shouting: “You can’t prove anything on me, copper!”
Looks like she was wrong about that.
Lordy Lordy, ya just need to love a country where being “street smart” is kewl, and where protecting friends will get ya 20 years…cause you a rich bitch.
From the CNN story:
I’m with dorfl. It’s like me getting arrested for the robbery of a 7-11, but they don’t charge me the robbery, only lying to police. Well if they weren’t a 100% sure about me robbing the 7-11, they obviously felt they shouldn’t charge me with it. But I get convicted for lying to the police because I said I didn’t commit the robbery? It’s BS.
Whether you think she did it or not, they didn’t charge her with insider trading, just lying about it. Well if they thought she was lying about it, they should’ve charged her with insider trading too then.
At this point, one begins to get into the whole concept of prosecutorial discretion. Remember, any kind of white collar crime trial is often 90% about educating the jurors into what proper procedure should be, then using a paper trail to prove the allegations. It’s often very difficult to prove, even in the best of times. I have little problem with a PA choosing to go for an easier to prove charge.
To take a lurid example (And not trying to make any comparison between Martha Stewart and Al Capone, just one about how proof is often easier for a different charge than the ‘original crime.’) it’s the same reasoning that had Al Capone tried and convicted on income tax fraud, instead of racketeering.
It seems screwy, but I just explained the Martha Stewart verdict to someone in a way that makes sense to me, but kind of indicts the entire justice system:
If you rob a 7-11, proving that you did so is fairly easy for prosecutors to do, because the jury knows what a 7-11 is, knows what robbery is, understands what your motivations might be, etc.
But if you pull off a complicated fraud scheme on your stockholders as a CEO, insulated by layers of intermediaries, the prosecutors have a much harder job, in educating the jury about your crime. They virtuallly have to give an education in business practices, finance, economics, etc. in a few days, and prove things that you had a ton of high-priced lawyers’ advice in protecting you against PLUS another ton advising you on how to make it seem doubtful to a reasonable person.
So since one type of crime is petty theft, and the other is premeditated swindling of thousand of people and millions of dollars, the first one will always be necessarily far likelier to result in punishment. Hardly seems like justice to me.
[Martha’s actual situation, of course, falls in between these two extremes.]