Kerry should pardon Martha

[SoCalDem]

and just say he felt compelled to pardon her because she did nothing that the former president BushII did not do..and he was rewarded by getting a share in a baseball team, a governorship and finally a presidency from his fiscal misdeed.. Also the fact that HE was on the finance committee, he was in a prime position to KNOW about the stock, where she only received a "tip"..

She also suffered more than he did because her daddy was not in a position to appoint someone to "overlook" the stock fraud..:)

[adriennel]

1. $40K!! How much did Kenny-boy get away with?

bet it was a lot more than $40K, and he's enjoying retirement.

this makes me so mad...this morning on CNN they were talking about Tyco and how money the execs stole...but Martha's still top story!

ARGGG :mad:

[trotsky]

2. Not to mention

even if Martha did what they CLAIM she did, it is trivial when compared to the conversations most CEOs have on golf courses daily.

Or compare Martha's $50,000 "crime" to the billions lost by Ken Lay et al.

[SoCalDem]

3. I think anyone who has an inside track on stocks

should be required to hold them for ONE YEAR..regardless of how the stock tanks.. That might get them to think twice about tips..

You know darned well that they are trading information all the time..

It really should not be illegal, since there is no way to control it, and the ones who do get caught are not enough of a deterrent to the reallllly big ones who do it all the time and are so good at it, that they never get caught..

[amazona]

4. she'll be out by then

The pardons come at the end, and surely she will be out in 8 year's time.

I agree that she should be pardoned even after the fact but wonder how much good it would do. I think there are sound political reasons presidents can't pardon until the end, unless they're Gerald Ford and have no hope of being elected anyway, ha ha.

[SoCalDem]

5. A pardon would clear her name and allow her to run the company

she started from scratch...

Personally I think she should give it to her daughter.. It will go to her anyway.. Martha should take the money she has left and just relax and enjoy life :)

I have never bought her stuff or made anything she demonstrated, but you have to give her credit.. She was slimed.. The stupid movie they did about her was a problem too.. That should bever have been allowed to be made until after the trial.. You cannot tell me that those jurors did not know about it or see it..

When they were picking the jury, I remember hearing that the judge had refused to release a juror who said he thought she was guilty.. She just asked him if he could listen to the testimony and manke a judgment based on them..He said he could .. yeh..rightt.:(

[rock]

7. Actually, the president can issue the pardons anytime he wants

They usually do this though when the political repercussions mean nothing.

[izzie]

6. No all those crooks should go to jail.

Hell I would take my changes with a guy robbing 7-11 over these guys. These crooks would steal your gold from your teeth, they are so greedy. Just what could be wrong with people who have million stealing another million?And they do not care who they take it from. Gee, I do not know about you but I can understand the guy robbing 7-11 when he is broke.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

9. Not if the 7-11 robber has a gun

Quite a difference between white-collar crime and violent crime.

[zonmoy]

11. Why not just send all corporate heads to prison

since I have no doubt that if they were actually investigated they would all be guilty of felonies.

[Westegg]

8. So she saved 50 grand thanks to inside info...

Dumb! I heard her net worth went down $85 million over the weekend.

I've also read that she rejected a govenment plea bargain that would have allowed her to still run her company, if she'd only cop a plea and pay a nominal fine and get probation. She was arrogant enough to reject this. Now, because she's a convicted felon, she'll be removed (by law) from heading up her own company, which will in turn send her company's stock into the toilet. So everybody loses. Including stockholders. Honest Joes and Janes who bought Martha stock will get screwed because Martha was too arrogant to settle this, and because the government, ultimately, doesn't give a shit about the average Joe or Jane. Ironically.

[amazona]

13. why should an innocent person accept a plea?

Clearly there was a difference of opinion over whether or not she engaged in insider trading. If the feds believe she committed insider trading, why didn't they take that case to a jury?

She was convicted, basically, of saying she was innocent. The whole case is ridiculous. A person should not be forced to plea to something they didn't do, because otherwise they will be given some onerous sentence for a non-existent offense. Would YOU "cop a plea" if you were innocent. I don't think so, and if you were so filled with fear that you had to, you would consider it a terrible injustice.

The jury system stinks. Year after year, DNA evidence proves that innocent people are constantly being convicted of things they didn't do. In crimes where DNA exoneration is not possible, do you honestly believe juries never make a mistake just because they're not called on it.

Martha is a better woman than I am, I have no faith in juries and would have fled the country in her shoes. It was clear that they were making an example of an innocent woman because they didn't want to prosecute the real criminals like Kenny-Boy who contribute to the GOP.

[Festivito]

10. I hope she is exonerated on appeal.

This is just what Republicans wanted. Scare Democratic supporters with overzealous unusual prosecutions. And, just before elections is perfect.

Accepting a pardon involves accepting responsibility. Martha still says she's innocent. I'd like to believe her yet.

[corporatewhore]

12. Why all the love for Martha she is the devil and love it when ceos go down

[lapislzi]

14. I think this is a non-issue

A jury convicted Martha Stewart of breaking the law. Pardoning Martha Stewart does nothing to prosecute the other criminals out there. She should do her time like everybody else.

To suggest that she is less than culpable because there are bigger fish out there is to muddy the waters.

[napi21]

15. Martha should go to prison!

She knew what she was doing was wrong and made a very poor decision to save $20,000+. When she got cought she was arrogant enough to believe no jury would convict the Beloved Marth so she turned down the plea. She was wrong. I believe she did the wrong thing at the wrong time. If she had done this same thing 3 or 4 years ago, I doubt she would have even gotten a question at all.

Smart as she is, she missed the boat on this one, and it's gonna hurt!

I spent 40 years as an accountant, ALWAYS guarding against any wrongs or even "perceived wrongs". Too bad, she got cought, and she's paying the price.

[question everything]

16. Martha Stewart Misgivings - WSJ Editorial

(snip)

Let's take the collateral damage. In sharp contrast to the other corporate scandals playing out in America's courtrooms, this is not about a CEO looting the corporate kitty for his personal enrichment (Tyco); creating shell accounts off-the-books to hide dubious debts and transactions (Enron); or even grossly betraying a fiduciary trust to shareholders (ImClone) as Sam Waksal did. It wasn't even about the company over which Miss Stewart presides, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. It was about the private sale of a stock to whose shareholders she had no fiduciary obligation.

Maybe there's some rough justice in putting Miss Stewart in an orange jumpsuit for fibbing about the circumstances of that sale with her broker. Manifestly the jury thought so. But in a case ostensibly brought on behalf of sticking up for the forgotten "little guy," we'd like to think prosecutors might have weighed the price paid by the truly innocent here: all the Martha Stewart Living shareholders, employees, executives, and so forth whose livelihoods have suffered tremendously since this case first broke into the headlines and whose futures, like their company, are now in limbo. And it's not just Miss Stewart's company: Kmart, a big buyer of Martha's products, is going to take a hit too.

We also have doubts about what "message" this conviction really does send about lying. In hindsight we can now see that had Miss Stewart said absolutely nothing at all when investigators came calling, she would not be facing jail time today.

(snip)

Finally, we come to a point we've stressed before: the absence of an underlying crime. Most of the charges against Miss Stewart were brought under Title 18, Section 1001 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime to lie to investigators. The dangers for overreach here should be obvious, and comments made back in 1996 by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and recently unearthed by the New York Sun now look prophetic.

"The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator -- aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case -- will create a crime by surprising the subject, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial," Justice Ginsburg wrote in a concurring opinion in Brogan v. United States, warning against the "sweeping generality" of Section 1001's language.

(snip)