Martha Stewart faces prison sentence
US domestic diva Martha Stewart has been sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement in New York for lying about a share sale.
She was also placed on probation and fined €20,000. The judge agreed a stay of sentence until an appeal is heard.
Stewart was found guilty March 5 of lying about a 2001 stock sale.
Stewart, 62, and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, were convicted of lying to investigators about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems stock in December 2001, just before the price plunged.
Prosecutors in New York said it was because of a tip that now-jailed ImClone CEO Sam Waksal was selling his shares of the pharmaceutical company.
Stewart and the broker maintained they had already planned to sell the stock at a particular price.
Stewart is an iconic figure in the US. Hundreds of fans had flooded the judge with letters begging for leniency.
“This woman is to homemakers what Einstein was to science and Freud was to psychiatry,” wrote Eleanor Flomenhaft, of Hewlett Harbor, New York.
