STOCK-TRADING SCANDAL Martha Stewart gets five months

Her immediate appeal prevented her from going automatically to jail.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Domestic icon Martha Stewart moved one step closer to a drastically different lifestyle behind bars when the millionaire entrepreneur was sentenced today to five months in prison for a stock-trading scandal.
Stewart, after appealing in a shaky voice for a reduced sentence, was also ordered to serve five months of home confinement for lying to federal investigators.
Just before her sentence was pronounced, Stewart -- her usually strong voice somewhat strained -- asked the judge to "remember all the good I have done."
"Today is a shameful day. It's shameful for me, for my family and for my company," she said.
Stewart, who was also fined $30,000, was spared an immediate trip to federal prison when U.S. District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum stayed her sentence pending appeal.
Judge Cedarbaum rejected a defense request to send Stewart to a halfway house for the first five months, noting that "lying to government agencies during the course of an investigation is a very serious matter."
The sentence was at the bottom of the confinement range for Stewart, who was expected to receive 10 to 16 months.
Continuing support
Earlier, Stewart, 62, dressed simply in a black pantsuit, showed no emotion as she strode briskly through a media horde.
Supporters applauded and one shouted, "Hold your head high, Martha!"
Her fall from grace did little to hurt her standing among Stewart fans. In the final weeks before Stewart's sentencing, hundreds of well-wishers sent letters to the judge asking for mercy.
"I am alone now with my pets," a woman named Ruth Ritter wrote to the judge in careful script.
"Just seeing Martha doing her crafts, cooking, gardening, was a great comfort to me."
Former Merrill Lynch & amp; Co. stockbroker Peter Bacanovic, who was convicted along with Stewart of lying about the 2001 stock sale, was scheduled to be sentenced later today.
The start of the scandal
It was Dec. 27, 2001, when Stewart, in a brief phone call from a Texas tarmac on her way to a Mexican vacation, sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems Inc., a company run by her longtime friend Sam Waksal.
Prosecutors alleged that Bacanovic, 42, ordered his assistant to tip Stewart that Waksal was trying to sell his shares. ImClone announced negative news the next day that sent the stock plunging. Stewart saved $51,000.
Stewart and Bacanovic always maintained she sold because of a preset plan to unload the stock when it fell to $60. ImClone now trades around $80.
The jail term was the latest blow for Stewart, once the CEO of a $1 billion media empire. After her 2003 indictment, she resigned as head of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. And after her conviction, she surrendered her seat on its board.
Shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia surged $2.45, or more than 28 percent, to $11.09 in trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange.
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