Martha Stewart made the same mistake Richard Nixon made: lying about what she did has gotten her into far more trouble than what she was lying about ever would have on its own.

And she is a living example of how karma works. Her alleged nastiness toward a wide variety of people throughout her adult life has come back to bite her. If she didn't have a longstanding reputation as a mean, nasty person, I think things would have gone much better for her.

But her lawyer seems like a complete incompetent. Why didn't he tell her that wearing expensive fur wraps to court (like she did the day she was convicted) just wouldn't strike the right tone?

Having said all of this, I think that sending her to prison would be wrong, very wrong. She should get probation and a hefty fine (of course she has already lost millions and millions of dollars because of this). She should also be barred from sitting on the board or being on the payroll of any publicly traded company forevermore. But sending a 65 year old woman with no criminal record to prison for something like this would be excessively cruel and pointless.