Martha Stewart

! In my opinion, Martha Stewart shouldnʼt have been sent to jail. The charges and the reasoning behind her going to jail was an attempt from the DAʼs office to get some attention to the case. Martha Stewart is a household name, and the government used that to make apoint to the American people that if you “lie to us, no matter who you are, you can go to jail.” I always thought that Martha Stewart went to jail for “insider trading”, not for lying to the federal investigators. Her activity with selling her stock was not illegal. Immoral maybe, but since she got her information second hand,they had nothing to charge her with. Yes, if she would have admitted that she knew something, then she wouldnʼt have been arrested. However, how many people tell the truth to the government in the first place. I think that instead of her getting sent to jail, they could have saved the tax payers money, from the cost of having another inmate, and gave her a large fine. $30,000 isnʼt a lot of money when it comes to a billionaire. After reading about the case, what I think was really unfair, was the fact that Sam Waskalʼs daughter, son, father, and many other people sold their stock that day, after getting a phone call from Sam Waskal encouraging them to sell. But not one of them were charged with insider trading. ! Sam Waksal was convicted of securities fraud, bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He was sentenced to 87 months in prison ( 7 years and 3 months), $4.3 million in fines, tax restitution, and banned from serving as an executive at any publicly traded company. Even though he got the maximum punishment allowable under law, in my opinion I feel like he got off easy. Since his pal- Martha Stewart got 5 months just for lying. Also because his family never got charged for selling their stock, I think that he should have gotten the maximum punishment allowed by law, for how many people he told. I think that the rest of his stock should have been taken away, and given to...