March 10, 2004
Martha Stewart, martyr
If you don't exactly know what to make of the Martha Stewart case, trying reading this interesting article by John O'Sullivan, who explains that she wasn't even charged with insider trading:
She was charged instead with obstructing justice during the FBI investigation into whether or not she had committed the crime. She had falsely claimed to FBI investigators that she had instructed her broker to sell the ImClone stock when it fell below a certain price.Now, you can lie quite legally to private persons or to the state police (though it is highly inadvisable, as well as immoral, to do so). Lying is a crime either when the liar is under oath or when he is talking to federal investigators. And though Stewart had not committed the crime, she had lied about not committing it. If the law were not an ass, she would have been charged with obstructing injustice.
And, in today's breezy, anything-goes climate, Sullivan asks, "Was there any sign of the leniency generally shown first offenders? Quite the contrary: The prosecutors alleged that for her even to maintain she was innocent was itself a crime. "
Maybe this isn't exactly a case of a butterfly broken on a wheel, but it sure smells of big bad prosecutors with too much time on their hands.
