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
Might be interesting to see what she has to say.
I like her gardening and cooking segments. And, every once in a while, I buy her companies magazines.
Yes, I'm a closet Martha fan.
if the gov. lies to me it's disinformation ,if i lie to the gov. it's a felony.think.......oldgringo
Who are you talking about?
What lie did the government tell you and are you seriously advocating that everybody lie to investigators?
It's all part of the joke that our judicial process has
become. With Court TV, Judge Judy, etc. we've made the
criminal justice system into a mass-spectator circus.
A juror in a high profile case gets an interview with
Geraldo, maybe a book deal. Convicted felons appear as
prime time guests. If the crime is sensational or salacious
enough -- maybe a film! The perpetrators can be interviewed on talk shows and discuss their crimes.
Martha has improved her corporate assets and can now
author a prison cookbook. We're the fools because we've
made a farce out of the system.
She actually changed the direction of my life from being a cubicle bound slave to owning a B&B and learning how to cook all those wonderful things she demonstrated on her shows.
I learned how to decorate a home, how to do fabulous holiday decorations, how to garden and so much more. (I was good at this anyway but didn't know I could do it for a living until she woke me up) Her craft & collectible shows were a great learning experience. There were so many good things.
Thanks Martha!
Maybe she will invent a new dish called Martha Stewarts Humble Pie.
the gov. has been lieing to me for 65 years if you live long enough you will learn. maybe the hard way like me.regards oldgringo.
Cool,a B&B huh! That is my ultimate goal(lucky you). Right now, I'd like to cater, then hopefully work my way to starting a B&B. However, that will be many years from now, unless we can settle down somewhere. Military life does not make that easy.
Yes, until the Democrats take over. Oh wait. I forgot. They already voted in some states.
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.
She even went so far as to order her secretary to delete any office records of her talking to her stock broker or IMclone CEO what's his name (Waskel) that day just in case the FBI or SEC came asking questions.
When the secretary hesitated, Martha relented and did the deletions herself on the office recordkeeping computer. Seconds later, upon realizing her secretary now had witnessed her shenanigans, Martha un-deleted the records and let them stand. (That, my friends, is a sign she knew she was doing something very, very illegal)
When the SEC and the feds DID come around asking questions, she lied about how she came upon the insider information, etc.
While in the scheme of things the $20,000 profit she made was really no big deal, it irks me to no end knowing that I, a simple investor who fights and scraps for each percentage of profit, am not privy to insider information the same way as Martha and IMclone CEO Waskel (the other person convicted in this case.)
The fact that she was a millionaire, to me, makes the crime even more aggregious and horrendous. After all, she didn't even need the money. She's just greedy.
Today's WSJ was all Martha every section.
Despite her politics, I've been rooting for her. Maybe she'll turn around to the right side.
"...it is incumbent upon society to recognize that the convict has paid the price and they should be allowed to return to society and, hopefully, become a contributing member of society."
For VERY minor crimes, I agree, but you must live in a neighborhood that doesn't announce and doesn't pass out fliers when the pedophile or rapist or firestarter or meth producer moves in down the block from you. Ignorance can be bliss, until the next child goes missing, or the next mother and daughter are tag-team raped, or the next garage "accidentally" catches on fire, or the next meth lab explodes, all of which have happened in Madison, WI, the Mecca of Liberals.
Not sure you'd be singing the same tune, were that the case where you live. As for me, time in jail means nothing. Jail is for punishement, not rehabilitation, and when people are sick and evil, it's society's responsibility to protect the rest of US from THEM.
She held a pretty high post there on the securities and exchange.
sure she did but she was convitced not for stock trading but for lieing to the gov.you should think.have you ever lied to the gov?
Only six states permantly remove a felon's right to vote. New York isn't one of them.
This is very naive. Their best friends are usually other criminals. They probably don't know who their father is and mom is a crack-head or on welfare. Usually the first thing they do on getting out of prison is go get a fix of whatever got them in trouble in the first place. The next thing is to look up old buds from the hood. From there, it's steadily downhill until their next visit to the slammer.
The notion that most criminals try to get a job on release but cannot because of their record is just not accurate. For the most part, they don't even try. Even if they did, the tatoos, the silly pants, the inability to speak English, the 'tude, and the lack of any job experience other than pimping, drug distribution, jacking folks on buses, or whatever, assure that they will not get a job with much more certainty than their record.
No. The idea that felons lose the righ to vote is largely mythical. 44 of the 50 states return the right of convicted felons to vote at some point or another. New York, where Martha is, it's completion of the sentence en toto. Texas, it's completion en toto and 2 years.
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