Martha gets 5 months:

Domestic icon Martha Stewart moved one step closer to a drastically different lifestyle behind bars when the millionaire entrepreneur was sentenced Friday to five months in prison for a stock-trading scandal.

"I'll be back," she promised afterward, speaking in a strong voice on the courthouse steps. "I'm not afraid. Not afraid whatsoever. I'm very sorry it had to come to this."

She also was ordered to serve five months of home confinement for lying to federal investigators. Stewart, who was also fined $30,000, was spared an immediate trip to federal prison when U.S. District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum stayed her sentence pending appeal.

In the courtroom, her voice was shaky as she appealed for a reduced sentence, asking the judge to "remember all the good I have done." [AP]

The NY Times has more:

Ms. Stewart was not convicted on any charges of insider trading, only for lying about the trade to investigators.

"What was a close personal matter became an almost fatal circus of unprecedented proportions," she said, adding that 200 people at her company had lost their jobs as a result of the publicity surrounding her legal troubles.

And in the plucky style for which the self-made millionaire is known, Ms. Stewart urged people to buy her magazine, and advertisers to keep purchasing ads. Meanwhile, she said, she will face whatever comes.

....The guidelines recommended a sentence of 10 to 16 months in prison for someone convicted of such crimes who has no previous record of criminal activity and is not considered a threat to society. Judges can add to or reduce a sentence for various reasons, including perceptions of the defendant's acceptance of responsibility.

Ms. Stewart arrived at federal court this morning appearing grimfaced and accompanied by her daughter, Alexis, her son-in-law, John Cuti, who is also an attorney, a bodyguard and other lawyers. A horde of reporters, news cameras and onlookers had been awaiting her arrival, and some of those in the crowd cheered as Ms. Stewart, dressed in a dark pantsuit, stepped from a sport utility vehicle and walked up the courthouse steps without saying anything to the crowd.

Gene Healy of the Cato Institute thinks the lesson of the case is about "the ever-expanding power of federal prosecutors":

James Comey, the federal prosecutor behind the Stewart case, says he went after Stewart "not because of who she is but because of what she did." But that's hard to believe given the audacious legal theory Comey used to pursue her.

Comey didn't charge Stewart with insider trading. Instead, he claimed that Stewart's public protestations of innocence were designed to prop up the stock price of her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and thus constituted securities fraud. Stewart was also charged with making false statements to federal officials investigating the insider trading charge — a charge they never pursued. In essence, Stewart was prosecuted for "having misled people by denying having committed a crime with which she was not charged," as Cato Institute Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds put it.

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