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NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge Monday rejected Martha Stewart's bid to end her five months of house arrest early, calling her sentence "reasonable and appropriate." U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum said she was not persuaded by Stewart's claim that the punishment was hurting her business. Stewart began her five months of house arrest in early March after serving a five-month prison term in West Virginia. She was convicted last year of lying about her sale of stock in a pharmaceutical company. The judge also brushed aside Stewart's bid to be allowed to leave her suburban estate 80 hours per week for business. Under the original sentence, she is allowed 48 hours per week.
Stewart asked for resentencing after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year made federal sentencing guidelines simply advisory for judges rather than mandatory. The original sentence of five months in prison and five months of home confinement was the least possible sentence Stewart could have received under the guidelines for her crimes. Cedarbaum said she would have imposed the same sentence even if the guidelines had not been mandatory at the time of the sentencing last summer. "In my opinion, the sentence I imposed was particularly needed to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law and to provide just punishment," the judge wrote. In a March Web chat, Stewart told fans that the electronic monitoring bracelet she must wear while under house arrest is "somewhat uncomfortable and irritating." The homemaking maven also told the judge that serving the rest of her sentence would hamper production of her two new TV programs — a daytime talk show and a version of NBC's "The Apprentice." In court papers that mocked the request for a shorter sentence, federal prosecutors urged the judge to uphold the original sentence. "Minor inconvenience to one's ability to star in a television show is an insufficient ground for resentencing," prosecutor Michael Schachter wrote. | 
