Issue 325
February 25, 2005
q Six suing state for years spent wrongly in prison by Janette Neuwahl
q High drama, conflict await Supreme Court this spring - The Associated Press
q Judge moves to protect Milgaard’s reputation – CBC News Online
q Defense Rests; Blake Doesn’t Testify by Andrew Blankstein and Jean Guccione
q Website Claims Scoop on Jackson Testimony by James Rainey
q Defense Calls Prosecution’s Ex-Star to Testify by William Glaberson
q Martha’s ‘Homecoming’ – CNN/Money
The following article appeared on boston.com on February 18, 2005:
Six
suing state for years spent wrongly in prison
By Janette
Neuwahl, Globe Correspondent
Six men who
spent years behind bars in Massachusetts for crimes they didn't commit are each
seeking up to $500,000 in compensation from the state under a new law that went
on the books in January, state officials and lawyers said yesterday.
Lawyer
Johnson and Neil Miller, both freed after spending a decade in prison, filed
legal motions in Suffolk Superior Court requesting the compensation Wednesday.
Their claims add to four other cases filed earlier this year. Johnson was freed
in 1982 after a witness identified the shooter in a murder that had led to his
conviction. Miller was freed in
1990 after DNA evidence cleared him of a rape.
''My life
has been a wreck, and I'm still recovering from the devastation that started in
1972," Johnson said yesterday. ''My life has been in limbo. God knows
where I would be if I hadn't gone through that injustice."
The six
cases are the first filed under a law providing up to $500,000 in damages for
those wrongfully convicted.
Four other
wrongfully convicted men -- Dennis Maher, Marvin Mitchell, John Scullin, and
Eduardo Velasquez (who went by the name Angel Hernandez) -- are also seeking
damages from the state.
Under the
law, passed by the Legislature late last year, exonerated individuals must seek
a civil trial to make their case for the compensation. They have to provide
evidence of their innocence either through a court order overturning the
conviction or a governor's pardon. The former prisoners are allowed to receive
up to $500,000, allowing the court to take into account lost income and other
factors in determining the amount of the award.
Massachusetts
joined more than a dozen other states with similar laws, including New York and
Illinois, said Peter Neufeld, cofounder and codirector of The Innocence Project
in New York City, which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners
across the nation. Neufeld also serves as cocounsel on several cases already
filed in Massachusetts superior courts.
''This
statute is long overdue, and we're very optimistic that the attorney general
will be supportive of these men and not treat these cases in an adversary way,
but rather do everything humanly possible to provide quick, meaningful
compensation for these people," Neufeld said.
The attorney
general represents the state in the trials.
The move to
compensate all of the wrongly convicted has taken years to become law. In 1982,
state senators drafted a special act to compensate Johnson, a Roxbury native
who was framed by a neighborhood acquaintance for the murder of a Chelsea man.
A witness testified years later that the neighbor, Kenneth Myers, committed the
murder. The Legislature did not pass that bill.
During the
1980s and early '90s, state lawmakers filed bills that addressed individuals
who were wrongfully convicted, such as Johnson and Bobby Joe Leaster, who
received $500,000 in 1992 from a special act of the Legislature.
In a legal
claim filed Wednesday, Miller said he was ''subjected to mistreatment and abuse
by guards and inmates alike" while imprisoned. Johnson, who is black, said
in court papers that he was convicted of killing a white man ''in a highly
charged trial at the beginning of the Boston busing crisis."
Johnson, 54,
said in an interview yesterday that he picked up a drug habit and a tendency
toward depression while in prison. Johnson added that he has not been able to
get a job and lives in a drug treatment center, where he is trying to kick the
addiction he fostered in prison.
The new law
stipulates that wrongfully convicted prisoners freed before this year have three
years from Jan. 1 to file their cases for compensation. For those exonerated in
the future, the former prisoners must file for compensation within two years of
leaving prison to collect damages.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on CNN.com on February 17, 2005:
High
drama, conflict await Supreme Court this spring
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The Supreme Court returns next week for the second half of its term
with some of the biggest issues yet to be decided: the juvenile death penalty,
Ten Commandments displays and the future of its ailing leader.
Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist, 80, has been working mainly from home since October, when he
announced he had thyroid cancer. Since then, his only public appearance was to
swear in President Bush last month.
Little is known about Rehnquist's
condition, though he appeared frail. The court has not said whether he will
return even part-time to the bench when the justices resume work Tuesday.
"It's symbolically important
that he return," said Stephen Wermiel, a law professor at American
University, noting it would help dispel concerns that Rehnquist isn't
sufficiently engaged in his job. "It will be an important guidepost to see
if he will come back at all."
Speculation is rampant that Rehnquist will step down, though
when that might happen is anybody's guess. Some believe he will wait until the
end of the session in June so any confirmation battle over a high court nominee
doesn't handcuff Congress at the beginning of Bush's second term.
Due to his cancer treatment,
Rehnquist did not participate in decisions from the dozen cases heard in
November. However, the court said he intends to take part in the December and
January cases by relying on briefs and transcripts of the arguments.
In the November cases, Rehnquist
has said he will step in to vote if the other eight justices are deadlocked.
Justices could rule as early as
next week on whether the Constitution allows states to execute juvenile
killers, a question that could strike down the practice in 19 states. The court
is closely divided on death penalty issues; the question is which side will get
the majority in this case, which was heard in October while Rehnquist was still
on the bench.
Other major cases already argued
but yet to be decided involve whether the federal government can prosecute
people who use marijuana medicinally, the scope of the landmark Title IX gender
equity law, and whether states can bar interstate wine sales over the Internet.
Justices will hear several
arguments this spring on religion and property rights, including a case Tuesday
that will decide whether cash-strapped cities may seize people's homes to make
way for economic development projects. The court also will revisit the death
penalty in late March when it considers how U.S. authorities should deal with
foreign nationals facing charges that could result in execution.
And it will hear a big-money
Internet dispute that questions whether file-sharing services should be held
responsible when their customers illegally swap songs and movies online.
The emotionally charged Ten
Commandments issue will be argued in two cases the court will hear March 2. The
question for justices is whether government displays violate the Constitution's
ban on "establishment" of religion.
The case offers Rehnquist another
chance to leave a constitutional mark on the role of religion in public life.
Last year justices punted on whether "under God" should be included
in the Pledge of Allegiance recited daily in public schools nationwide. They
rejected the case on technical grounds.
"There's going to be a lot of
fireworks here," said Richard Garnett, a former Rehnquist clerk who
teaches law at Notre Dame. "I'm sure the chief justice would very much
like to be able to participate fully in this term's cases since so many are
closely connected to his constitutional legacy, such as religious
freedom."
In the coming weeks, justices will
consider whether to hear the Bush administration's challenge to Oregon's unique
assisted suicide law, and a challenge to the government's right to put terror
suspect Zacarias Moussaoui on trial even though he had no access to potentially
favorable al Qaeda witnesses.
The Supreme Court also expects to
receive soon a government appeal of a lower court ruling letting colleges limit
activities of military recruiters on campus because of the military's ban on
openly gay people.
But if accepted for review, those
cases won't be heard until the new term starting in October. If Rehnquist does
step down as expected, a court divided 5-4 on issues including the death penalty,
affirmative action and gay rights could by then have its first new member in
more than a decade.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on cbc.ca on February 23, 2005:
JUDGE
MOVES TO PROTECT MILGAARD'S REPUTATION
SASKATOON---The
judge running the inquiry into the wrongful murder conviction of David Milgaard
has ruled lawyers must prove evidence thatattacks Milgaard's character is
relevant before reading it aloud.
Justice
Edward McCallum has expressed concern that Milgaard, who spent 23 years behind
bars for a crime he didn't commit, could be harmed by testimony and questions
at the inquiry.
On
Wednesday, he ruled that he will balance the potential value of statements and
questions that lawyers want to introduce against the potential harm to
Milgaard's reputation.
However, he
also said he wants to make sure all important information comes to light.
The ruling
was prompted by strenuous objections from Milgaard's lawyers about how
witnesses have been questioned.
So far, all
of the testimony at the inquiry has revolved around people who first implicated
Milgaard in the 1969 rape and murder of Saskatoon nursing assistant Gail
Miller.
Much of that
testimony has cast Milgaard in a less-than-favorable light.
Milgaard's
lawyers said dredging up the details amounts to character assassination.
However,
lawyers for the prosecutors and police said it's crucial the inquiry hear
everything they heard in order to understand why Milgaard was a suspect.
Milgaard was
jailed at the age of 16 in 1970 and stayed there until the Supreme Court
ordered his release in 1992. DNA evidence exonerated him in 1997 and was used
to convict Larry Fisher in 1999.
The inquiry
that began Jan. 17 is expected to last a year.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on February 24, 2005: Defense Rests; Blake Doesn't Testify
The actor's
lawyer sticks to his strategy of focusing on the lack of direct evidence and
accusing the LAPD of bungling the murder investigation.
By Andrew
Blankstein and Jean Guccione
Robert
Blake's defense closed Wednesday without his testimony, gambling that jurors
wouldn't buy the state's largely circumstantial case accusing the actor of
shooting the wife he despised after failing to find someone else willing to commit
the crime.
M. Gerald
Schwartzbach called 38 witnesses to emphasize the lack of evidence directly
linking his client to the 2001 murder of Bonny Lee Bakley, and to attack the
quality of the Los Angeles Police Department investigation, which focused early
on Blake.
Schwartzbach
has closely followed a blueprint he laid out for jurors in his opening
statement. And he avoided previous counsel's "trash the victim"
strategy, which dominated the early stages of the case with accounts of
Bakley's involvement in a mail-order pornography business.
"For a
celebrity case, it was tried like a pretty standard criminal case," with
the defense focusing on reasonable doubt, said Laurie Levenson, a former
federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
She noted
that Blake, 71, would not only face life imprisonment if convicted of murder,
but could get up to nine years if found guilty of another charge, solicitation
to murder.
"For
Blake, there are a lot of ways to lose," Levenson said. "At his age,
it could be very close to a life sentence."
Although
Bakley hasn't emerged unscathed at trial, Schwartzbach suggested that someone
from her past was out to harm her and that Blake was concerned enough with the
threat that he began to carry a gun for protection.
Prosecutors
have built their case on the testimony of stuntmen Gary McLarty and Ronald
"Duffy" Hambleton, who each said Blake asked him to "pop"
or "snuff" Bakley, laying out multiple scenarios to kill her,
including one involving the restaurant near which she was slain May 4, 2001.
The
defense's strongest moment came during the cross-examination of McLarty, when
he acknowledged a long-term cocaine addiction and a drug-induced breakdown in
which he thought police were tunneling under his home and satellites were
monitoring his every move.
To a lesser
degree, Schwartzbach tried to discredit Hambleton — who testified that he
hadn't used drugs since 1999 — with witnesses who told jurors he had done so as
late as 2001.
"Clearly,
they didn't make the best witnesses," said Robert Pugsley, a professor at
Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. "On the other hand,
that's all the prosecution had…. Even people on drugs can tell the truth."
Still, legal
experts say that by keeping Blake off the witness stand, the defense will leave
jurors focused on the credibility of those who did testify.
When a
defendant takes the stand, "it becomes, 'Do we believe the defendant?'
" said Peter Keane, a former public defender who teaches at Golden Gate
University School of Law in San Francisco.
But there is
what Levenson called "the Peterson effect," referring to Scott
Peterson, who did not testify at his murder trial and was convicted of killing
his wife, Laci, and unborn child.
Jurors want
to hear from the defendant, Levenson said. They want to hear that side of the
story.
Yet there's
an obvious risk for any defendant who takes the stand.
"As a
general rule in a criminal case, if you can keep your client from testifying,
you do," Keane said.
Blake's case
has an added problem. If he had done well, prosecutors would have claimed he
was merely acting, Levenson said, calling it a no-win situation.
Despite
extensive pretrial publicity about Bakley's tawdry past, legal experts said,
Schwartzbach was smart to avoid dirtying her name.
"One of
the things that turns jurors off is tarnishing the victim," Keane said.
"Jurors resent it."
And the
experts said Blake's earlier lawyers, most notably Harland Braun, excelled in
influencing the jury pool by painting Bakley as a scam artist who bilked men
answering her ads in lonely-hearts magazines.
The experts
downplayed Schwartzbach's accusations that police mishandled evidence and homed
in too early on Blake.
Since the O.J.
Simpson double-murder trial, "we have not had a case where the LAPD has
not been accused of mishandling evidence," Pugsley said.
And it is
common for police to focus immediately on the spouse of a murder victim.
"In
most domestic-partner killings, the surviving partner is the usual prime
suspect. That doesn't mean Blake did it," Pugsley said, "but
statistically he was the most likely suspect."
Throughout
his case, Schwartzbach tried to shore up the account Blake gave to
investigators: that he often parked on the street behind Vitello's restaurant
in Studio City, that he kept large amounts of cash at home and that at least
once he left his handgun in the same booth as he told police he did on the
night of the murder.
But the
defense, like the prosecution, kept circling back to the star witnesses, the
stuntmen.
Schwartzbach
opened his case with Cole McLarty, who testified that his father, Gary, said
Blake had offered the stuntman $10,000, not to kill Bakley, but to beat up a
stalker.
Prosecutors
countered that the younger McLarty had sold his story to tabloid publications.
Schwartzbach
also called two admitted drug users, including one with a state prison record,
who testified that they used methamphetamine manufactured in a pool cabana at
Hambleton's Lucerne Valley ranch. They said the stuntman had frequent delusions
that included sightings of a 4-foot horned animal and intruders dressed as
sagebrush and Joshua trees. But that raised the issue of deciding which drug
user to believe.
The defense
closed with a play for jurors' heartstrings.
Their final
witness was Father George Horan, the senior chaplain at Men's Central Jail, who
regularly met with Blake while the actor was behind bars.
"The
basic emotion was one of sadness and, secondarily, that he had pretty much
given up the idea he was going to survive in jail," Horan said.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on February 18, 2005:
Website
Claims Scoop on Jackson Testimony
The Smoking
Gun releases much of what it says is the transcript from the grand jury
proceedings last year.
By James
Rainey
The
three-man staff at the Smoking Gun had been crashing on the story well into the
wee hours Wednesday night and then through the day Thursday — scrambling to
review, scan and post hundreds of pages of what the website claimed was grand
jury testimony from the Michael Jackson child-molestation case.
"We
need a back room full of monkeys to put all this stuff up there," said
William Bastone, co-founder and editor of the New York-based news outlet.
"We are not called on very often to process this much stuff."
Tired but
ebullient, the Smoking Gun's operators appeared, once again, to have scooped
the nation's biggest media outlets — and plenty of tabloid competitors — by
obtaining and publishing much of a 1,903-page document that had been sealed by
Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville.
Repeatedly
over the last eight years, the tart, celebrity-centric website —
thesmokinggun.com — has found and posted original documents about the missteps
of the rich
and famous — and those who aspire to the same.
The site
once outed the dream-groom of Fox Television's reality program "Who Wants
to Marry a Multimillionaire?" showing that Rick Rockwell had been the
target of a restraining order for allegedly threatening an ex-girlfriend.
It obtained
and posted the 1977 Oui magazine interview in which future movie star and
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had bragged about his sexual escapades.
Also making its debut on the site's colorful pages: a judge's account of former
Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith's difficulties with math and her finances. (She
couldn't seem to decide the right number of zeros when balancing the books.)
The website's
targets have routinely been angered, but unable to dent the credibility of the
reports.
Many of the
revelations, however, have challenged mainstream media outlets, where news
managers must decide whether to republish the information.
On Thursday,
editors at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times were among those who
decided not to run accounts of the purported grand jury testimony in today's
editions. Neither newspaper could confirm that the transcript on the website
matched that on file in Santa Barbara County Superior Court. Associated Press,
which supplies stories used by many newspapers and broadcast outlets, took a
similar position.
At the Santa
Barbara News-Press, which is widely circulated in Santa Maria, where the trial
is taking place, managing editor Linda Strean said the paper was still working
Thursday evening to try to confirm the Smoking Gun document.
"We are
in process, as they say," she said.
Selection of
a jury for the trial is scheduled to resume next week after a break called when
Jackson, 46, fell ill.
Jackson's
attorneys have bemoaned earlier leaks of grand jury information to the Smoking
Gun and ABC News, noting that the defense is not present during grand jury
hearings and witnesses before the panel did not face cross-examination.
Media
advocates argued that Thursday's postings showed the need for more openness in
the Jackson case, in which virtually all documents have been sealed and
participants on both sides have been ordered not to speak publicly.
"This
is one of the great fallacies of these gag and sealing orders," said Kelli
Sager, a lawyer for many media organizations, including the Los Angeles Times.
"Pieces of information inevitably get leaked, but the public doesn't get
the whole picture or know for sure whether the documents are real."
While it
focuses on the outrageous and offbeat, the Smoking Gun's founders and operators
are highly thought of by many peers at more traditional news outlets.
Bastone
spent more than 15 years as an investigative reporter at the Village Voice in
New York City, where he built a reputation as one of the top authorities on the
city's byzantine world of organized crime.
His onetime
Voice editor and friend Wayne Barrett called Bastone a "genius" at
ferreting out documents and sensitive information.
One of the
Smoking Gun's co-founders was Daniel Green, another former Voice employee whose
father is a real estate magnate and whose uncle, Mark Green, made a failed bid
for mayor of New York.
Bastone and
Green started the venture in 1997, working part time out of the Voice offices
on a site designed by Bastone's wife, Barbara Glauber.
A
breakthrough came in 2000 with the Rockwell restraining order. That same year,
Bastone and company sold the site to Court TV. They now operate out of the
cable outlet's Manhattan offices.
The Smoking
Gun draws millions of visitors and performs best among young men 18 to 35,
according to the site's operators. Only 28 sites on the Internet are cited more
often by blog operators, according to one tracking service.
One standing
feature, "Mug Shot Mania," features stars at their lowest moments —
often seeming strung out and painfully dissipated. In a 1972 shot after his
drunk driving arrest in Anchorage, Steve McQueen waves a peace sign and smiles
wanly.
Another
feature reproduces the legal contracts showing the peculiar demands of musical
and stage acts. Example: singer Johnny Cash's insistence that an American flag,
of specific dimension, be installed on stage during his performances.
The Smoking
Gun's Jackson reports have been a mixed bag for the singer.
A 2003
posting provided fresh details of molestation accusations that had arisen a
decade earlier. But the site also posted findings from the Los Angeles County
Department of Children and Family Services that those charges against Jackson
could not be substantiated.
Bastone said
he and fellow employees Andrew Goldberg and Joseph Jesselli did not hesitate to
post the new document once they confirmed its authenticity.
And with
more than 1,200 pages of testimony from 30 other witnesses still in its
possession, Bastone said he was certain the website would display more of the
transcript today.
"This
is a very famous guy charged with a heinous crime," Bastone said. "And
nobody really knows anything about the charges. Certainly you could make an
argument about the public's right to know. How is Michael Jackson being treated
by the criminal justice system, and were the charges ginned up against him or
are they legitimate?"
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on nytimes.com on February 18, 2005:
Defense
Calls Prosecution's Ex-Star to Testify
By William
Glaberson
His name is
Mohamed Alanssi, the government informer who set up a sting that snared a
Yemeni sheik who was once, prosecutors claim, Osama bin Laden's spiritual
adviser. He was to be the prosecution's star witness, until he set himself on
fire outside the White House in November, protesting his handling by the
government.
Prosecutors
promptly dropped him as a witness, but yesterday he was on the witness stand in
Brooklyn anyway.
In one of
the stranger law enforcement stories since the Sept. 11 attacks, and quite
possibly since long before that, it was the defense that called the
government's main informer to testify, hoping to discredit the prosecution's
case by portraying him as a greedy liar and a con man. Anyone expecting a
courtroom spectacle was not disappointed.
Defiant,
still obviously bitter about his treatment by government agents and expressing
entitlement to millions he has not been paid, the Yemeni-born Mr. Alanssi said
he deserved money for the risks he took in helping America fight terrorism.
He took some
verbal shots at the federal agents who were once his allies, but he also tried
to demolish the defense, unloading accusations that the jury had not heard yet
concerning what he said were the sheik's ties to Osama bin Laden and commitment
to jihad.
He was
brash. He called the sheik's three-week-old trial "my case" and
referred repeatedly to the sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, as "the
terrorist."
"After
I chase the terrorist and bring him here to America, I deserve even $10
million," he said, though he acknowledged he had asked for only $5
million. "I asked for $5 million hoping it will go up - no problem,"
he said through a translator.
He broke
into a grin as there were chuckles at his wiliness from the audience, which had
started to gather in Federal District Court in Brooklyn after word spread that
he was on the stand.
"My
right is to make money to support my family," he said. "My right is
to get the American citizenship."
A small man
of 53 with slicked-back gray hair, he rocked as he gathered steam, sitting in
the witness chair dressed in a blue suit with a crisp white shirt. The only
sign of his injuries from the White House incident was a flesh-colored glove on
his right hand that his lawyer said was part of his burn treatment.
He was ready
to spar with the defense lawyers. One of them, Howard L. Jacobs, led him
through a list of accusations he had made against the sheik and an aide, who
are charged with conspiracy and providing material support to Al Qaeda and
Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization.
The sheik's
charity, which the defense has claimed was his life's work, was "a
front," Mr. Alanssi testified. When the sheik had spoken of needing
medical care, it was a code for collecting money for jihad, he said.
Mr.
Alanssi's testimony was a twist on his role in the original sting operation in
Frankfurt in the winter of 2003. At that time, he helped convince the sheik
that a donor wanted to give him millions to funnel to jihad.
Yesterday,
he was working to damage the defense that had called him after the prosecution
discarded him. The prosecutors were taking their chances with the secretly
recorded Frankfurt videotapes in which he has been seen leading the sheik
toward what has become one of the Justice Department's most visible
terrorism-financing cases.
Mr. Jacobs,
shouting, challenged Mr. Alanssi, claiming that much of what he said was
uncorroborated. "We have to take your word for it, is that right?"
Mr. Alanssi
half-turned toward the translator as he answered the questions in Arabic.
"The proof is there," he said calmly, without missing a beat.
"Just run the video and see the tape and everything is obvious."
The jurors
have seen the Frankfurt tapes and have been given prosecution transcripts
quoting the sheik as saying that jihad was his field and that he would give
money to "Hamas, Al Qaeda, prisoners, mujahedeen and such."
Mr. Jacobs
made his points, too. He walked Mr. Alanssi through some of his tangled past,
including legal and financial problems. Mr. Alanssi quarreled about some of the
details but acknowledged that his life had been in something of a downward
trajectory before he offered his services to the F.B.I. after Sept. 11. "I
been always a rich man," he said, "but
lately,
things happened."
Prosecutors
are to question Mr. Alanssi next week, but he did much of their work for them
yesterday. The prosecutors' decision not to call him originally meant they had
to forfeit some of their claims against the sheik. The most important of those
were Mr. Alanssi's claims that the sheik had described close ties to Mr. bin
Laden in conversations that were not recorded.
With little
prodding, he repeated those statements yesterday. He answered questions from
Mr. Jacobs by insisting that the sheik had told him in conversations in Yemen
that he had given money and weapons personally to Mr. bin Laden.
"He
told me he gave bin Laden more than $20 million," during the years before
the Sept. 11 attack, he said.
Mr. Jacobs
is to continue his questioning on Tuesday. He did not ask yesterday about the
White House episode, which Mr. Alanssi described in a note to the F.B.I. at the
time as an expression of his frustration with what he saw as broken promises
from the F.B.I.
Yesterday,
among the past distortions and difficulties he admitted, he did acknowledge
that he lied when he claimed before he set himself on fire in November that the
F.B.I. had promised to make him a millionaire.
"I was
upset," he said.
As for his
motives, he insisted that they were far more pure than getting rich.
"It was
my duty," he said, "to cooperate with the American government against
the terrorists that I know."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on cnnmoney.com on February 23, 2005:
Martha’s
‘Homecoming’
Lifestyle
company changes tune, re-embraces disgraced founder; tales of eating dandelions
in prison.
NEW YORK
(CNN/Money) - Not long ago, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia seemed eager to put
as much distance as possible between itself and its famous founder.
After Martha Stewart's conviction
a year ago for obstructing justice and lying to investigators, the New
York-based company cancelled her columns, downplayed her name in its flagship
magazine, and actively promoted a new crop of lifestyle experts in the hopes of
stemming mounting losses.
Now, with Stewart, 63, due to be released from prison
next week and having undergone an image makeover that surprised critics, Martha
Stewart Living Omnimedia (up $2.92 to $37.40, Research) is reaching out to its
namesake with open arms.
Investors are betting heavily on the company's future once
Stewart returns -- if not as an executive, at least as the creative brains
behind it.
The Securities and Exchange
Commission wants to prevent Stewart from returning to MSO's executive suite,
but Stewart's attorneys may be able to negotiate a settlement with the SEC that
would permit her to return to the helm of the company at some point, a person
familiar with the situation told CNN.
In the March issue of Martha
Stewart Living and on the company Web site, editor-in-chief Margaret Roach says
Stewart will begin penning a new column for the magazine starting in April.
Roach's letter also offers a vivid
first-person account of her interaction, through letters and personal visits,
with Stewart since she began serving a five-month sentence at the federal
prison in Alderson, W. Va., also known as "Camp Cupcake."
Early in her prison term, Stewart
herself was posting notes to supporters on her personal Web site,
www.MarthaTalks.com. But after a pre-Christmas missive in which she lamented
the "bad food" in prison and criminal sentencing guidelines, Stewart
has not been directly heard from since.
Stewart is scheduled to be released
from prison on March 4. Upon her release she will serve five months of house
arrest in Bedford, N.Y., where she's been renovating an estate she bought in
2000.
In the editor's letter, which
refers to Stewart's "homecoming," Roach writes about letters
exchanged with Martha that describe her "foraging for wild greens, such as
dandelion" on the prison grounds to "augment the limited fresh
vegetable offerings in the diet," decorating the prison chapel with
remnants from the garden, and cooking up impromptu recipes in the microwave
with ingredients from the commissary. (See correction).
Stewart has also been reading
"voraciously," including Bob Dylan's memoir and a biography of John
James Audubon, the naturalist and renowned bird-lover.
The letter also relates a story
about Martha launching into a "downward-facing dog" yoga pose, which
turned into a headstand, in the prison visiting room.
The move to include a Martha
Stewart column in the monthly magazine represents a change of strategy for
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. The company had previously distanced itself
from its founder and former Chairman & CEO, after her conviction last
March.
But since two Martha Stewart
television shows have been announced, a daily lifestyle program and a new
version of "The Apprentice", both produced by Mark Burnett, her star
has risen.
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