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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (20802)	3/8/2004 4:11:47 PM
From: aerosappy	Respond to of 23153

An ironic twist in Martha's case is that while the Feds spent thousands of hours in pursuit of Martha, the guys like Steve Chase, the Regas father-sons team, Lay, Ebbers, Kozlowski, et. al., who looted billions from the investing public will probably get off because no jury can understand what they did.

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (20802)	3/8/2004 8:35:27 PM
From: Libbyt	Respond to of 23153

don't talk to the feds or any investigators about anything... I agree with you... and the lesson learned will be to do exactly as you stated... to not talk unless "a signed and sealed grant of total immunity... your lawyer present and video tape running." IMO too many juries don't carefully listen (or fully understand) the instructions of the judge, and from some of the comments made by the jurors in this case, I think they "overstepped" their duty as jurors.

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (20802)	3/8/2004 9:41:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 23153

siliconinvestor.com

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (20802)	3/9/2004 1:37:29 AM
From: Libbyt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Martha Stewart's Conviction Sends the Wrong Message By Allan Sloan Tuesday, March 9, 2004; Page E03 The Martha Stewart case creeps me out. And I'm not a Martha fan. I don't like Martha Stewart. I am congenitally unstylish. I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful: the people like Stewart. Heck, I even criticized greed and overreaching during the '90s, when most of journalism was kissing up to (now-busted) dot-com billionaires and (now-disgraced) celebrity chief executives and (now-humiliated) analysts who never saw a stock they didn't like. But the Stewart case bothers me, big time. First, I don't consider Stewart's real misdeeds -- stupidity and greed and cluelessness -- to be criminal offenses. Second, people are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia. Look, Enron and WorldCom and Global Crossing and Adelphia have done huge damage. Thousands of people lost their jobs and lifetime savings as a result of this corporate misbehavior, stockholders lost vast amounts of money, creditors were cheated, and entire communities were so damaged they may never recover. These things aren't as mediagenic as the Stewart trial, and don't offer the same malicious glee people get from watching an icon crumble. But they're a helluva lot more important than Stewart's case, which has used up so much journalistic oxygen. Stewart's trial wasn't about corporate misbehavior. It was about misleading the government, which was investigating her for a crime -- insider trading -- that she was never charged with. If Stewart weren't such a big name, who'd care about this stuff? For heaven's sake, when a cop pulls you over for going 70 in a 55-mile-per-hour zone and you say you didn't know how fast you were going although you damn well did, you're lying to an investigating officer. If you take $520 of charitable deductions on your income tax but can document only $500 of them, it can become tax fraud. If the government decides to put your life under a microscope, do you think it won't find something? I suspect there's not an adult in the country who would walk away totally unscathed if every aspect of his or her life were investigated the way Stewart's ImClone trading was. The conventional wisdom is that by convicting Stewart of lying and obstructing justice, the government has struck a blow for truth, justice and the American way. It has put the fear of God into people, who will now be forthcoming and forthright. That's the rationale for spending all that time and effort and money prosecuting a coverup when there wasn't any crime. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. The lesson that any thinking person draws from the Stewart saga is that when the government asks questions, run for your lawyer and don't say a word. Had Stewart kept her mouth shut, she'd be OK. In this litigious world, far too many chief executives already listen to lawyers, whose advice is almost always to say nothing. That argument is now more convincing than ever, thanks to the Stewart case, and the flow of information to the public will suffer because of it. The one serious crime of which Stewart was accused -- luckily, the judge threw it out -- arose from her proclaiming her innocence. The government charged her with trying to manipulate the stock price of her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, by falsely saying she was innocent. If there was ever an example of chilling free speech, this is it. Had Stewart sold Omnimedia stock after making her statements, I'd sympathize with the government, overreaching as this charge was. But she didn't sell. All she did was defend herself. Today, the government whacks Stewart for daring to defend herself. Tomorrow, my friend, it could be your turn in the barrel. It doesn't bother me to see Stewart smacked around. If she had an ounce of common sense or self-awareness, she'd have known how smelly her ImClone sale looked and canceled it, retroactively, when the government began sniffing around. Better yet, she could have given the money to charity. Stewart sold her 3,928 ImClone shares for $58 on the day before the company announced that its cancer-drug application had been rejected by the Food and Drug Administration. Had she instead sold at $43.39 -- the stock's lowest point on the first business day after the FDA rejection was announced -- she would have gotten $57,388 less. If she'd donated a nice round $60,000 to a noble cause as an act of contrition to clear her name, you think she'd have ended up on trial? No way. People expect a professional throat-biter like me to cheer the downfall of a powerful and greedy person like Martha Stewart. Sorry, I can't do it. I would be happy if the government had gotten her for cheating people, or some other real crime. But for this? Give me a break. Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail address is sloan@panix.com.

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (20802)	3/9/2004 5:16:24 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 23153

Martha Stewart's failure to testify holds a lesson for other celebrity defendants. ____________________________ When Silence Isn't Golden COMMENTARY The Los Angeles Times March 9, 2004 By Jonathan Turley - a professor of law at George Washington Law School and a criminal defense attorney. _________________________ According to some of the jurors in the Martha Stewart case, they hoped their guilty verdict would send a message to the rich and powerful. It is more likely, however, to send a message to a much smaller group: Stewart's co-celebrities facing trial for crimes ranging from murder to rape. Stewart is vivid proof that the price of silence for a celebrity defendant can be conviction. For, say, Kobe Bryant or Michael Jackson, the Stewart trial offers a textbook example of how not to construct a defense. The decision not to have Stewart testify in her own defense followed a conventional strategy. Defense lawyers are risk-averse; they usually prefer to play the cards they have rather than risk giving the government a better hand. Silence is a strategy that is normally adopted when you are more concerned about losing rather than gaining ground. In this case, however, they held a bad hand. The trial was not going well. The defense had failed to significantly rebut the testimony or the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, and, by the time the government closed its case, the odds of a conviction were high without a dramatic change — a witness who could reshuffle the deck. There was only one possibility, and that was Stewart herself. Having Stewart testify would clearly have been a high-risk move, the ultimate legal Hail Mary pass; it might have yielded a hung jury, with one or two jurors willing to hold out against conviction. Stewart's lawyers had obvious reasons to keep her off the stand. They wanted to avoid the personal and professional embarrassment of a cross-examination and, particularly, a cross-examination disaster. She would have faced a series of extremely difficult questions: For instance, why did she change a critical computer message from her broker and then change it back? More important, Stewart had been portrayed as a petty tyrant, a boss with a nasty side who relished every vice of power short of beating her underlings with a riding stick. To the jury, she was worse than a stranger; she was a menace. If those personality traits appeared on the stand, she might assure her conviction. A trial, however, isn't about the defendant but about the jurors, and jurors want to hear from the accused. They often view themselves in the shoes of both the victim and the alleged perpetrator. They want to know why an act occurred, but, more important, whether they would or could commit the same act under such conditions. Stewart needed their empathy. Of course, to successfully testify, the famously perfectionist Stewart would have had to reveal her vulnerabilities, her imperfections. For instance, was it a humbling level of understandable fear and confusion that caused her to change that computer message? In the days since the verdict, a few jurors have revealed that at various points they indeed felt sorry for Stewart. Her unwillingness to speak for herself surely prevented her from capitalizing on such feelings. Stewart and her lawyers should have heeded history. Celebrity criminal defendants who have testified have done well. Indeed, their training and experience in maintaining public images can be highly effective on the stand. Fatty Arbuckle testified in his murder trial. He was ultimately acquitted after a series of hung juries. Errol Flynn testified in his statutory rape trial and was acquitted. Charlie Chaplin testified in his Mann Act trial and was acquitted. (O.J. Simpson didn't, but then he was assisted by one of the worst prosecutions in history.) The lesson of the Martha Stewart verdict may be most relevant for basketball star Kobe Bryant, who faces rape charges. In a he-said, she-said case, "she" will often win if "he" says nothing. To remain silent after the victim goes through grueling testimony can easily alienate a jury. To testify or not to testify may be a more difficult question for Michael Jackson. There is no doubt that the jury will want to hear from him. However, because of his eccentricities — his gender-bending persona, for instance, isn't likely to resonate with an average jury — his attorneys will be disinclined to put Jackson on the stand. The prosecution will surely portray him as a freak who abused children brought to him under the false inducement of care and sympathy. His silence would leave such images largely unchallenged. Watch for the defense to attack the victim's mother with particular viciousness, trying to reduce the need to put Jackson on the stand. In retrospect, there is an ultimate irony in the conservative defense strategy adopted by Stewart and her lawyers. As one of the nation's most successful businesswomen, Stewart was known for her aggressiveness and boldness in the marketplace. She made more than a billion dollars selling herself to strangers. Yet that chutzpah failed her when it counted the most: when she didn't take the opportunity to sell herself to a jury. For defense lawyers and defendants, the court record — Martha Stewart Litigating — should be required reading in the months to come. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- latimes.com