Martha Stewart Sentenced to Five Months
Update: The transcript of our Washington Post live online chat today on Martha's sentencing is available here.
Bump and Update: Martha gets 5 months in federal custody, five months of home detention. The Judge recommended she serve her time at the federal prison camp in Danbury, CT. She is not contrite. The news is reporting she received a stay pending appeal, but since her lawyers haven't yet filed the Notice of Appeal (they have ten days to do so) we're wondering if the news is confusing release pending appeal with an order for a stay pending a voluntary surrender. We'll keep checking.
What do you think? Did she get off too light or was this a trophy conviction for the Government? In our view, it's the latter.
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Original Post 12:10 a.m.
At 10 am this morning, Martha Stewart learns her fate. We'll be doing the live chat for the Washington Post on the sentencing at 1:00 pm ET. Please join in.
It's expected the Judge will give Martha between 10 and 16 months. We've heard a lot of so-called experts on tv tonight, mostly former prosecutors who are still pro-prosecution, giving a lot of different scenarios. One former prosecutor gleefully said she's going to a federal penitentiary and she's going tomorrow.
Let's be real. If her guideline range is between 10 and 16 months (Zone C of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines,) the minimum term may be satisfied by --
- (1) a sentence of imprisonment; or
- (2) a sentence of imprisonment that includes a term of supervised release with a condition that substitutes community confinement* or home detention (pdf) according to the schedule in subsection (e), provided that at least one-half of the minimum term is satisfied by imprisonment.
So Martha's best case scenario is five months in federal custody, followed by five months of home detention.
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