Once again, there is a huge difference between mounting a defense and lying through your teeth. If this distinction is beyond you, I fear we won’t get much out of this debate.
Pleading not guilty to a charge that you committed is not lying to a federal official. There is no way Martha Stewart will be criminally charged for pleading not guilty and demanding the government prove her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Just as you can plead not guilty and put up evidence in your defense, as long as it is not perjury, you cannot be charged with a crime. However, if you get up on the stand and knowingly lie, that is perjury.
However, none of that is what Martha Stewart was convicted of. She was convicted for conspiring with her stockbroker, and lying to federal officials who were investigating the sale of her IMCLONE stock. While she has the right to put a defense at trial, she cannot lie to officers and obstruct their investigation. She can refuse to talk, but if she does, she cannot lie about it.
Yes. And Martha, if she hadn’t tried to cover up her sale, would have gotten a fine and gone on her merry way.
Hate to think about what? That you can’t lie to police officers so that they have to spend months more time and hundreds of thousands of more dollars to further investigate through your lies?
I’ll wait until she is actually sentenced before I’ll comment on what she should be sentenced to.
And if Martha had done that, she never would have been convicted. Does that make you feel any better
Hamlet Of course I recognize the difference but I wouldn’t say it was huge. Actually we seem to agree with each other for the most part.
You said,
I didn’t say that it was. What I said was I could be charged with lying to a police officer if I said TO HIM when I got pulled over. “I wasn’t speeding.”
Thanks for the confirmation.
Again, what is it that you are disagreeing with me about. Besides the misquote regarding lying to an officer.
No, I hate to imagine what a travesty of justice we could all be subjected to if our legal system so vindictive that it would use the examples that I described in ordinary practice. ie: arrest someone for failure to appear or whatever then pile up a list of charges that came about as a result of their defense.
I suppose I need to work on my writing skills. This occurs quite frequently it seems. I say one thing and someone else reads it differently than it was intended.
I’m not a fan of MS by any means, but I’m not going to belittle her intellect just because she made her millions through the marketing of domestic crafts. There’s no reason to think she’s not as smart as all the other boys in the business, who for years have probably been doing the kind of stuff she did. The only difference is that she was caught, and caught around the same time that Lay’s shit hit the fan.
Dont worry about Martha being in prison, or that she might be beaten up or maltreated while she is in there.
I seriously doubt that Martha will be “punished”/treated harshly in prison, or that she will be beaten up, or have a hard time.
Her lawyers will most certainly see that she is given the best of treatment by everyone,and that she will never ever be beaten up like a common person would be. She can easily give/pay a million dollars each to her head prison guards, and to the toughest inmates, to make sure that she is protected from violence from other fellow prisoners. If I was in prison and I had a few hundred million, I would make sure that I was well treated by paying off the guards and the toughest thugs around me to take care of me - she will too.
In Rovian terms, no Bush should not pardon. Stewart is serving as a sacrificial goat, not for the Enron/Adelphia/Worldcom crooks, but for all the Wall Street crooks who were engaging in insider trading practices. Hundreds of millionaires, i.e., Republican campaign donors. They’ll all slink into the darkness while the spotlight is on Martha like the cockroaches they are.
If Stewart is pardoned, it destroys the public perception the Stewart trial is meant to create, that the feds are “doing something” about all those Wall Street clerks. That would make a lot of potential Repub donors … very unhappy. While garnering few if any votes. Bad idea, says Karl.
I’d be OK with Martha’s prosecution, if I wasn’t so sure it was cover for Repub donor criminals.
What I believe you are saying is that it is a travesty of justice that it is illegal for a person to lie to a federal official during an investigation. It seems to me that you are indicating that it should be OK to knowingly lie to police officers. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
In addition, I honestly don’t see how you come to the conclusion that if you are arrested for an offense and mount a defense, you can and will be charged with obstruction of justice. I tried to explain that that can’t happen, but you continue to say that it can. It didn’t happen in the Martha Stewart trial, and it doesn’t happen in real life. I don’t know what else to say.
Err… if you tried to change the officer’s speedometer so it looked like you hadn’t been speeding and got caught doing it, that might be more comparable to this situation. Lying to a cop on the highway is probably not comparable to lying on the record to a federal investigation.
Since y’all can’t seem to get over the obstacle in my example regarding lying to a police officer could get you a ticket. Let me quote myself with some explanation and perhaps you’ll get the message.
I bolded “could” in this quote to emphasize the idea that it only possible not probable.
The example of a speeding ticket was just an example, it doesn’t have to be a speeding ticket. Lying to the police is fairly subjective and is a chargeable offense usually left to the officer’s discretion. If you don’t think so, try telling them an incorrect name if you’re ever asked. Okay, I hope that helps. BTW I don’t condone or approve of lying to the cops. Even if I did only have a couple of beers.
The meaning of this comment is, that I DON’T believe that this would normally occur. I DON’T believe the courts operate this way beause if they did we’d all be subject to an unjust system.
The example I described is possible. You could wind up in jail with a pile of charges (after the fact) and have been innocent of the original arrest. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s a long story. Let’s just suffice it to say. I know it can happen. Thank GOD the courts are as fair as they are. When the original charge was dismissed the judge threw out the others and had a long talk with the arresting officer who was looking for a new job soon thereafter. The guy had a problem and took it out on a civilian. It happens.
So I talked to a family member of mine who is a former assistant U.S. attorney, and he says that (1) Martha Stewart was treated more harshly than in a typical case; and (2) it’s legitimate for the government to be more aggressive in this case – they are taking advantage of the publicity to send a message to the public.
I suppose that point #2 has some validity. Folks might think more carefully now before acting on inside information (of course, they might be thinking more carefully about how to conceal their misconduct!!).
Nevertheless, I am still troubled by the situation.
