Martha Stewart speaks (on Blakely)!!

Well, the headline above may be a bit misleading, but according to this NY Times/AP story, Martha Stewart has decided to surrender for prison as soon as possible in order to "put this nightmare behind me and get on with my life."

Blakely nuts like me of course recall that, as discussed here, Judge Cedarbaum had cited Blakely when granting Martha's application for a stay of sentence pending appeal. According to the NY Times/AP story, Martha's lawyer Walter Dellinger "said he still believed she had a chance to win a reversal of her conviction [but he] had asked a federal judge to withdraw the stay of her sentencing pending appeal."

I cannot help but speculate about what sort of Blakely-related advice Martha received. I would guess that, despite my musings here and here, Martha's lawyers sensibly concluded it was unlikely Martha would be able, because of Blakely, to do a lot better at any resentencing. Or, to be more precise, Martha's lawyers probably said that she likely could serve her 10 months and be free before the all the questions surrounding federal sentencing law would be resolved. Thus, the case stands as another example of a point Jason Hernandez made here last month: many defendants are as interested in certainty as leniency; like Martha, they just want to do their time and be done with it.