STOCK-TRADING SCANDAL Stewart's sentencing due today

The maximum punishment would be 10 to 16 months in prison.
NEW YORK (AP) -- In the final weeks before Martha Stewart's sentencing for lying about a stock sale, hundreds of well-wishers sent letters to a federal 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."
From Springfield, Ohio, four middle school cooks and a custodian sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asking for a light sentence.
"Martha Stewart has been an inspiration for women across the nation," they wrote. "A hard-working, delightful character that shares her creative ideas with everyday people like us."
The homemaking maven was due in a federal courthouse today to learn whether the stock-trading scandal that tarnished her empire of gracious living would land her in prison.
Legal experts predicted Cedarbaum would sentence Stewart to 10 to 16 months in prison.
Also scheduled
Former Merrill Lynch & amp; Co. stockbroker Peter Bacanovic, who was convicted along with Stewart of lying about the 2001 stock sale, also was scheduled to be sentenced and faced the same 10- to 16-month prison term.
Cedarbaum had the option of allowing the pair to spend half their sentences at halfway houses or confined to their homes -- or of giving them no prison time at all.
In the event of a prison sentence, lawyers for Stewart, 62, were expected to ask the judge to allow her to remain free while she appeals her conviction.
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 trial
The star witness against Stewart was Douglas Faneuil, a young former brokerage assistant who vividly described Bacanovic's order when he learned Waksal was trying to sell: "Oh my God. Get Martha on the phone."
Ann Armstrong, a veteran Stewart assistant, also testified Stewart had altered a computer log of a message Bacanovic left earlier that day about ImClone.
But the verdict March 5 -- guilty on four counts apiece for Stewart and Bacanovic -- set off a string of events as dramatic as the trial itself.
In April, lawyers for both defendants accused one juror of lying about an arrest record in order to get on the trial. Cedarbaum denied a request for a new trial, saying there was no proof the juror lied or was biased.
And in May, federal prosecutors accused Larry F. Stewart, a Secret Service ink expert, of lying repeatedly in his testimony at the trial -- mostly about the role he played in ink-analysis testing of a stock worksheet.
Just last week, Cedarbaum again denied new trials for Stewart and Bacanovic, this time saying there was "overwhelming independent evidence" to support the guilty verdicts.
Both the juror issue and the Larry Stewart perjury charges are expected to form the basis of the appeal.