Posted on 03/03/2005 4:04:47 PM PST by Former Military Chick
WASHINGTON : US lifestyle guru Martha Stewart was set to leave jail Friday after a five-month sentence for a stock scandal that boosted her career rather than dooming it.
Stewart's time in jail officially ends Sunday, but the federal prisons bureau can release prisoners on a Friday if their sentences end over the weekend, said US prisons spokeswoman Carla Wilson.
Supporters eagerly awaited her release from the Alderson minimum security prison in West Virginia, which inmates call "Camp Cupcake."
The news media were also outside the prison in force.
Stewart's reputation has made a massive public rebound during her time in Alderson, despite the conviction for lying about a dodgy stock sale.
She will serve five more months under house arrest at her 62-hectare (163-acre) country estate in Bedford, New York.
She will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet tracking her movements.
Stewart may leave the property for 48 hours a week for work, which she already has lined up.
Indeed, Stewart, 63, has won a contract to host a knock-off of tycoon Donald Trump's successful NBC television reality show "The Apprentice."
She will also star in a show focusing on the same subjects that she built into a multi-million dollar lifestyle empire -- cooking, entertaining, decorating and home renovating.
"People love redemption stories," said "Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett. "You pay your price and Americans allow you to move on."
The businesswoman was convicted in March last year of lying to federal agents investigating her sale of nearly 4,000 shares in biotechnology company ImClone Systems.
She began serving her sentence in October.
Newsweek noted her post-conviction fame in its cover this week headlined: "Martha's Last Laugh: After Prison, She's Thinner, Wealthier and Ready for Prime Time."
However, the newsweekly is also in trouble for using the head of Stewart on the body of a model for the cover picture.
Shares of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) empire, which she founded, have quadrupled in value since her sentencing in July.
Company shares were up 3.81 percent Thursday, reaching 33.26 dollars in afternoon trading.
In March 2004, she resigned as the company's a director and "chief creative officer" while accepting a new position of "founding editorial director."
According to Stewart's aides, the empire's founder is very optimistic about her future.
"This year, we usher in spring with an extra measure of gratitude, because the month of March not only marks the vernal equinox on the twentieth and the real start of our Northeast growing season, but also Martha's homecoming," Margaret Roach, editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, wrote in the magazine's March edition.
Roach said Stewart will plant a garden in an old estate she has been renovating in Bedford.
"I can tell you she is, indeed, ready to get planting, having ordered her seeds and made extensive to-do lists, just as she would have done in any winter," the editor wrote.
Roach also recounted some of Stewart's prison activities.
"The tales were always surprising," she said.
Stewart foraged for wild greens such as dandelion on prison property "to augment the limited fresh vegetable offerings in the diet there," helped decorate the chapel for a memorial service and made microwave meals "with whatever very basic ingredients the commissary had for sale."
She also launched a yoga class that she taught for 10 inmates, spent time crocheting and used old ceramic molds to create a nativity scene for her mother.
Roach even told how Stewart had carried out a yoga pose called "downward-facing dog" in the visitors' room at the prison "from which she seamlessly moved into a headstand." - AFP
Lil' Kim is charged with one count of conspiracy, three counts of perjury, three counts of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. She faces 30 years in prison.
Gee and you claim to be a Conservative to boot?
While the prison guards handed the media a press release Martha's get away drove right passed them. LOL!
Empty tarmack, no plane in sight. Just illustrates how pointless this whole exercise is.
Apparently so.
I read all the gloss pieces in the Wall Street Journal...her PR team has been working overtime. I predict she will be called to testify before Congress on conditions in women's federal prisons, and with her neighbors Kudlow and Bartiromo giving her interviews, she will be back on top in no time.
30 years? Wow...She'll be 60-something when she gets out.... That ends her career as a rap artist.
LOL...they'll be saying that every few minutes I bet,for the next how many hours,until she either does leave,or they figure out that she's already left. And this is "news"? LOL
I understand she lied to a grand jury on material facts. That kind of thing is never pleaded out. If Kim get's any kind of release, she'd be wise to bolt.
(whoops, was that out loud? I disavow that paragraph...)
Lil Kim? Yes,most assuredly and not to any camp cupcake.
Seriously? Lil Kim is going to jail for a long time? (How did I miss this?)
I sensed her career was over a while ago. Too bad. I liked her even though she did a lot of trashy gangsta rap sex stuff. Oh well...lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
MSNBC has the Martha car chase going on. LOL!
I am still incredulous each time I read someone who says Martha didn't really do anything but lie.
DID anyone watch the trial or read the indictment???
She freaking was trading on insider information, information that SHE KNEW was insider even if she was not a principal owner of Imclone, the company in question.
________________________________________________________
I am still incredulous each time I read someone who says that "insider trading" is some huge crime. Exactly who was hurt? You think someone bought stock that would not have bought it if she had not sold it? They would have bought from someone else.
Do you know that trading on "insider information" is not even illegal in some developed countries and their financial markets work fine. Markets are there to process information. Markets don't in the least bit care who bring the information to the market. Keeping information from the market is bad public policy.
This is a classic example of what I was talking about making something illegal, selling a stock you think you know will fall in value, that most people do not think is a crime. [Many people think insider trading is some kind of price fixing.]
BTW, it is what the government can prove against you than matter not what the alledge in an indictment. They proved only lying to them against her. They did not even indict for that "insider trading." I can see why if you believe someone was guilty of everything the government even investigated them for because they were convicted of one thing, why you would view being a felon as more of a stigma than the public apparently do.
I don't like rap music, but for looks, Faith Evans has it goin' on!
SMOKING GUN:
MARCH 3--Look, we don't know if this Lil' Kim (real name: Kimberly Jones) is guilty of perjury or not. But we expected a bit more from her former codefendants, Suif "Gutta" Jackson and Damien "D-Roc" Butler. These two thugs, pictured below in New York State Department of Correctional Services mug shots, have ratted Jones out to federal prosecutors who have charged the rapper with lying to a grand jury investigating a February 2001 shooting outside a New York City radio station. Both Jackson, 35, and Butler, 33, have admitted to opening fire at rivals of the female performer outside the WQHT offices. And now they're contradicting Jones's sworn testimony that she was not acquainted with them or knew details of the gunplay. While it's going to be a few years before Gutta and D-Roc leave the joint, we're guessing that the rap community will not be throwing the snitches a welcome home party. (1 page)
Looks are deceiving. She's a cokehead.
That does not shock me in the least. I am watching the coverage on MSNBC and it frankly is a hoot.
That there are cameras following her motorcade to the airport. That her daughter is on the plane and when the vehicle stops by the plane she will exit the car and look at her adoring fans and media and wave and off to her estate she will fly.
I have no doubt she will be back in the swing of things faster than most give her credit in doing so.
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