- NEW YORK -- Martha Stewart
has had a packed summer diary. It has been parties and more parties for
the diva of domesticity. Parties in the city and parties at the beach.
Charity parties, movie parties. But a less enticing appointment is on the
page for today. It reads: 10am, Judge Cedarbaum, Manhattan.
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- By lunchtime, Stewart should know what her punishment
is to be for lying to investigators about a dodgy stock sale she made in
2001. Almost certainly, she will be going to prison, for a while.
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- Maybe the thought of incarceration helped fuel her appetite
for the social whirl this summer. Enjoy your freedom while you have it,
she might have told herself, when she was convicted on 5 March after a
long trial. There will be no champagne in the clink.
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- Or has she just been in denial? By most accounts, Stewart
has still not been able to grasp how one deal a sale of all her shares
in a biotech company a day before negative news about its future sent its
stock price tumbling landed her in so much trouble.
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- Before this, she was one of America's most-admired women,
with television shows, a publishing empire and, most of all, a reputation.
Today, Stewart is a convicted felon. In theory, she faces between 10 and
16 months in federal prison.
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- It is possible that Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who presided
over her trial, will show leniency, possibly giving her community service.
But Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor in private practice in Washington
DC, thinks Stewart could have at least a year in prison.
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- The former domestic goddess may have done herself no
favours by celebrating the social season so visibly. Judges look for signs
of remorse and repentance when delivering sentences, so hiding behind the
well-cut hedges of her Connecticut mansion might have been wiser than posing
for the paparazzi as she did at the New York premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11.
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- "She's not coming across well," Edward Hayes,
a trial lawyer, told The New York Times. "It continues to be all about
her and she never does say anything about the people who got hurt. There
has been no exhibition of remorse."
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- Stewart could end up at a low-security prison in Danbury,
Connecticut, where the hotelier, Leona Helmsley, was jailed for tax evasion
(she said she thought taxes were paid only by "little people").
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- The US penitentiary system has harsher places, but life
in Danbury would still be tough. Jail work pays 40 cents an hour; last
year, Stewart earned $673 (£365) an hour.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=541471
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