Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Sloppy Martha Journalism by Reuters

Reuters is reporting that:

Home designing diva Martha Stewart, facing criminal charges in an insider-trading scandal, is feeling scared but doubts she will go to prison, she told ABC News in a recent interview set to air early next month.

Tsk, tsk. As regular readers of this space know, Martha is not being tried for insider trading. The criminal proceedings go solely to obstruction of justice (with one non-insider trading count of securities fraud). To the contrary, the Justice Department decided going after Stewart would be an “unprecedented” expansion of insider trading law. As for whether Martha is likely to be convicted on the obstruction charges, my most recent take on that issue is here (with links to earlier posts).

UPDATE: A reader writes that my post was:

Accurate in substance, but technically, she's being tried for (1) conspiracy to obstruct justice, make false statements, and commit perjury in violation of 18 U.S.C. s 371 (Count 1); (2) making false statements in violation of 18 U.S.C. s 1001 (Counts 3 and 4); (3) obstruction of justice in violation of 18 U.S.C. s 1505 (Count 8); and securities fraud (Count 9). The false statement counts, though perhaps overly technical in nature, represent the greatest threat to her.

I agree that counts 3 and 4 are the ones that are most likely to land Martha in Club Fed.