Though she had just been sentenced to prison, Martha Stewart stormed the courthouse steps last Friday like a woman who had been exonerated. She swept through her entourage and confronted the media horde that had dogged her for two years. "Is this on?" she said, grabbing the microphone, brushing back her blond locks and launching into a withering condemnation of her prosecution. "That a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion and with such venom and gore, I mean, it's just terrible," she seethed over her obstruction conviction in the ImClone stock scandal. "I have been choked and almost suffocated to death." Her steely demeanor was a stark contrast to the Martha who moments earlier had made a teary appeal for leniency to a judge. Now that she'd received the lightest sentence possible—five months in a federal pen, five months under house arrest at her Bedford, N.Y., manse—Stewart had a score to settle. And a business to rebuild. Looking squarely at the camera, she declared: "I'll be back. I will be back."
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