Turow wrote a great piece on Martha in the Times today. [View All]

[AP]

I've argued the same exact thing here with little success. It was a relief to read this article today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/opinion/27TURO.html?hp

{Stewart apologists} repeatedly noted that Ms. Stewart was charged only with lying after the fact about the stock sale, but not with securities fraud for the transaction itself. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, said there "was something strange about prosecuting someone for obstructing justice over a crime that the government doesn't claim happened." And some feminists have suggested that Ms. Stewart was being penalized for being a powerful woman.

I don't buy any of it. What the jury felt Martha Stewart did — lying about having received inside information before she traded — is wrong, really wrong. And the fact that so many on Wall Street have unashamedly risen to her defense is galling — galling because what she did actually harms the market. Wall Street leaders should be expressing chagrin that a corporate tycoon — who was also a member of the New York Stock Exchange board — could feel free to fleece an unwitting buyer.

Virtually everybody who takes Ms. Stewart's side conveniently ignores the fact that there was some poor schmo (or schmoes) out there who bought her shares of ImClone. Those buyers, no matter how diligent, no matter how much market research they read, no matter how many analysts' reports they studied, could not have known what Martha Stewart did: that the Waksal family was dumping shares. In my book, that's fraud. Martha Stewart ripped her buyers off as certainly as if she'd sold them silk sheets that she knew were actually synthetic.

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Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the whole case, to me anyway, is how the arguments in defense of Ms. Stewart show a widespread mentality that is all too comfortable with unwarranted privilege. It is yet another example of how justice is very different for the rich and poor.

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To be sure, Martha Stewart, Peter Bacanovic and their lawyers have every right to complain loud and long about allegedly perjured testimony. But like most of the caterwauling that has gone on in this case, these cries of outrage cannot change the fundamental facts. The jury convicted her not because of anything Larry Stewart said, but for the reason juries are supposed to: there was solid proof that Martha Stewart deliberately violated common standards of honesty and decency, and lied about it when she was caught. And it is only the privilege the law sometimes extends to the well-to-do that explains why she was not convicted of more.