Martha Stewart Case Report
How it all ended
Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail followed by five months of home imprisonment and a fine of 30.000$ by the criminal court judge. This was a vey lenient sentence, as she could have gotten a much longer time in prison and could have had her home confinement replaced by more time in prison.
The judge chose to be lenient on her, partly because she made a plea to her, saying that she deeply regrets what she's done, acknowledges that it was wrong and is deeply sorry for her misdeeds. The judge believed that she was sincere and was suffering emotionally for what she's done and would continue to suffer for it.
That is why the sentence was light. The judge knew that Stewart would never do such a thing again, and this was probably also a factor in her giving the light sentence. In the SEC civil case, Stewart agreed to a five-year ban on serving as an officer or director in her company and to a fine of about 200,000$. This may be considered a harsh punishment, but it is definitely preferable to a longer period of jail time, so all in all- I believe the punishment she was given was a fair one.
Bacanovic agreed to a fine of about 75,000$ from the civil case as well as his criminal case punishment which included a 5 month jail sentence followed by a 5 month home confinement (like Stewart) and a 4,000$ fine. His punishment is fair in my view because he was a broker working in that line of business and used his connections to tip the information to his client. By doing so, he led to the entire chain of events. He could've gotten a much worse punishment.
As for Faneuil, he got a 2,000$ fine due to the fact that he originally concealed some of the facts and was given perks to stay quite when he realized what had happened. It is because his cooperation with investigators in the later stages of the investigation that he received such a light punishment. All punishments were therefore appropriate.
Written by Roei Levi
Roei1987@hotmail.com