Closing arguments made in Martha Stewart trial

By Erin McClam
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Martha Stewart's lawyer implored jurors yesterday to let her "return to her life" by acquitting her of federal charges.

Escorted by her bodyguard, Martha Stewart entered federal court in Manhattan yesterday holding hands with her daughter Alexis. Associated Press

"If you do that," he said, echoing the homemaking icon's well-known slogan, "it's a good thing."

Lawyers on both sides concluded their closing arguments, and jurors were expected to begin deliberating today after they receive lengthy legal instructions from the judge.

Morvillo said "nobody is disputing" whether Stewart was told ImClone Systems founder Sam Waksal was trying to sell ImClone shares. But he maintained she had a sale agreement with her broker and was telling the truth when she told investigators she did not recall being tipped about Waksal.

Earlier, Morvillo insisted that prosecutors had not disproved the central defense element — that Stewart and her broker had a plan to sell her ImClone Systems stock when the price fell to $60 per share.

Inconsistencies in the stories Stewart and broker Peter Bacanovic told investigators about the $60 deal show it was not the careful cover story prosecutors have claimed it was, Morvillo said.

"The government is accusing Martha Stewart of participating in a confederacy of dunces," he said. "Nobody could have done what Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic are alleged to have done and done it in a dumber fashion."

Prosecutors contend the $60 story was concocted to cover the real reason Stewart sold — that Bacanovic ordered his assistant to tip her that Waksal and his family were selling ImClone shares.

In a brief rebuttal for the government, prosecutor Karen Patton Seymour said Morvillo's suggestion that a conspiracy would have been a stupid idea was invalid because it is "what white-collar criminals do every day."