<http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1246>
Martha Stewart: Political Prisoner
by William L. Anderson
[Posted June 9, 2003]
It has finally come down to this: Martha Stewart must go to prison, or at the very least be forced to step down permanently from her position as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a company that she built from scratch.
James B. Comey, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has successfully obtained an indictment on obstruction of justice charges, conspiracy, and securities fraud against Stewart as a result of her December 2001 sale of ImClone stock after the Food and Drug Administration had rejected its application, and her conduct following investigation of the sale.
(In a related story <http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/01/news/companies/imclone_colon.reut/index>, it now turns out that the ImClone anti-cancer drug Erbitux, which was at the center of the controversy, is as effective as the company had claimed. To put it another way, this whole mess could have been avoided had it not been for the FDA's incompetence.)
For all of the vows by Stewart's attorneys that Martha will "vigorously" contest these charges, she truly faces an uphill battle. Unlike the typical set of criminal laws that exist to protect innocent people (i.e. laws against murder, assault, and theft), Stewart has been indicted under a set of laws that exist for one and only one purpose: to gain convictions. Given the hard and unpleasant facts of federal criminal law in 2003, it will be a miracle if Stewart is able to beat these charges. Too much is at stake politically for the government to back down now. To put it another way, Martha Stewart is likely to be a political prisoner.
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