|
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has delayed Martha Stewart's sentencing for lying about a stock sale by three weeks, to July 8, federal prosecutors said Monday. The sentencing had originally been scheduled for June 17. The chambers of U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who will hand down the sentence for Stewart and former stockbroker Peter Bacanovic, had no immediate comment. Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in Manhattan, confirmed the change but said she did not know why it was made. CNBC reported it came at the request of defense lawyers.
A call to a Stewart spokeswoman was not immediately returned. Stewart and Bacanovic are expected to be sentenced to 10 to 16 months apiece in federal prison for lying about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems Inc. stock in late 2001, just before the price plunged. But Stewart is expected to ask for a new trial because of newly unveiled perjury charges against Larry Stewart, a government ink expert who testified for the prosecution at trial. Legal experts have said that request is a longshot because Larry Stewart's testimony mainly concerned a charge of falsifying documents against Bacanovic - a count on which he was found innocent. A previous new-trial request filed by Stewart and Bacanovic has already been rejected by Cedarbaum. In that request, the pair claimed a juror had lied to get on the 12-person panel that returned the conviction. | 
