WOULD "I HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT" HAVE BEEN MARKET MANIPULATION?

Personally, I don't have much stake in whether or not Martha Stewart goes to jail in and of itself. I'm annoyed by the hoopla, of course, because it's distracting the country from the real corporate criminals, whose crimes are exponentially more severe and grand than those of Ms Stewart. Though I do think she will not go to jail even if convicted, which isn't guaranteed, since she had a stop-order in place four weeks before ImClone tanked.

But this is ridiculous:

NEW YORK - Prosecutors tucked a highly unusual twist into their indictment of Martha Stewart — a charge that she committed a crime simply by declaring her own innocence.

Prosecutors say the domestic guru committed securities fraud — that is, she deliberately tried to inflate the stock of her own company — when she stood up in public last summer and denied engaging in insider trading.

"I was a little surprised at that," said Richard A. Serafini, a former economic crimes prosecutor in New York. "There's kind of a natural tendency when you're confronted with something to deny it. Now they're charging it as market manipulation."

Legal experts said the charge is a high-risk move designed to convince a jury that Stewart hurt thousands of ordinary stockholders in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia by trying to cover up her legal problems.

To the feds prosecuting this case (and thus, the DoJ and the administration), I ask: What the fuck would you have had her say!?!? For example, if she had made statements saying "I did it", would she have been attempting to gain sympathy and get the situation behind her . . . thus boosting Omnimedia's stock?

On its face, the idea of charging someone with fraud for asserting their own innocence is absolutely ridiculous; the stuff of Stalin-era show trials, not of the American judicial ideal. (then again, what with Gitmo and all, am I that surprised?)

(link via a lot of places)