--- title: Martha Stewart Prison Sentence Anniversary description: Oct. 8, 2004: Martha Stewart begins a five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators canonical: https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/ author: Jennifer Latson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-08T14:30:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:36:22.493Z article:section: Health og:title: Martha Stewart Went to Prison 10 Years Ago og:description: Oct. 8, 2004: Martha Stewart begins a five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators og:url: https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6675890dd98f1c0/6986a72a169ab0723e27b95e/alderson.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Alderson, W.V. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Martha Stewart Went to Prison 10 Years Ago twitter:description: Oct. 8, 2004: Martha Stewart begins a five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6675890dd98f1c0/6986a72a169ab0723e27b95e/alderson.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Martha Stewart's Prison Time Actually Helped Her Business > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Oct 8, 2014 2:30 PM UTC  A sign welcomes Martha Stewart to town near Alderson Federal Prison Camp where Martha Stewart turned herself in Oct. 8, 2004, in Alderson, W.V. A sign welcomes Martha Stewart to town near Alderson Federal Prison Camp where Martha Stewart turned herself in Oct. 8, 2004, in Alderson, W.V. Joe Raedle—Getty Images by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Oct 8, 2014 2:30 PM UTC Prison did not seem to change Martha Stewart much. Defiant in her assertions of innocence even after being convicted of lying to investigators about a 2001 stock trade, the doyenne of DIY told supporters that the issue was “a small personal matter” that had become ”an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions,” [according](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/business/martha-stewart-s-sentence-overview-5-months-jail-stewart-vows-ll-be-back.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1) to the _New York Times_. Her trial was indeed a circus, drawing crowds of reporters along with supporters wearing chef’s hats. Conscious that she was the star of the show, Stewart nonetheless put little effort into playing a sympathetic character. She carried to court a Hermès Birkin bag worth more than $10,000, [according to Vanity Fair](http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2005/08/martha-stewart-200508), as well as cushions to ease the discomfort of her time in a hot seat that happened to be a hard wooden bench. She reportedly asked the courtroom sketch artist to draw her with flawless skin. Jurors, meanwhile, found the flaws in her statements to federal investigators sufficient to declare her guilty. A federal judge sentenced Stewart to five months in a West Virginia women’s prison, followed by five months of house arrest during which she would wear an ankle monitor to guarantee she didn’t hop a stone wall and flee her Bedford, N.Y., farm. She reported to prison on this day ten years ago, Oct. 8, 2004, and, with her trademark industriousness, proceeded to make the most of hard time. “She read endless books down there, and I think she began by studying Spanish,” Stewart’s friend Memrie Lewis told _Vanity Fair_. “She was in charge of decorating the prison for Christmas, and she had a $50 budget. It was a totally different time for her. She took all of her Christmas cards, and everyone gathered around, and she read every one of them to these people. She made an event of it, to share her huge correspondence with people who didn’t have anyone writing to them.” Stewart signed her own Christmas cards “Martha Stewart, Alderson, West Virginia,” making no effort to conceal her location, which of course the world knew anyway. She bore her circumstances with the righteous indignation of those who feel they have been wronged. Her fellow inmates seemed to appreciate Stewart, nicknaming her M. Diddy. Unincarcerated Americans, too, seemed find her more endearing after she did time; if anything, she was more in demand post-prison. In December of 2002, while her trial was ongoing, TIME [noted](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1003853,00.html) that, despite the fact that her usual holiday-time media presence had been all but erased, her line of K Mart products was doing well. In addition, ad sales were up for her magazine, _Living_, and her line of interior paint was growing. And that trend continued. Though stock in her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, tanked during her trial, it recovered while she was in the big house. Within months of her release, she had lined up two new TV shows: a spin-off of Donald Trump’s _The Apprentice_ and a daytime talk show called _Martha._ With the public’s backing, she was restored to her status as both revered domestic guru and billionaire. **_Read a 2002 analysis of the ImClone collapse, and what Martha Stewart knew when, here in TIME’s archives_**: [Sam’s Club](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1002707-1,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/"},"headline":"Martha Stewart's Prison Time Actually Helped Her Business","datePublished":"2014-10-08T14:30:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:36:22.493Z","description":"Oct. 8, 2004: Martha Stewart begins a five-month sentence for lying to federal investigators","url":"https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/","keywords":["Crime","Living","martha stewart"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6675890dd98f1c0/6986a72a169ab0723e27b95e/alderson.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb6675890dd98f1c0/6986a72a169ab0723e27b95e/alderson.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Alderson, W.V.","caption":"Alderson, W.V.","creditText":"Joe Raedle—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3474918/martha-stewart/","name":"Martha Stewart's Prison Time Actually Helped Her Business"}}]}] ```