Martha Stewart is ready for prison - and if she can't go to Connecticut, she wants to serve her time in Florida.
By AMY WIMMER SCHWARB
Published September 18, 2004
[AP photo]
Martha Stewart could serve her sentence in the Coleman Federal Corrrections Complex women's prison camp.
COLEMAN - All those tired jokes about Martha Stewart's impending prison sentence (i.e., black-and-white stripes will be in this season) could soon have a Sumter County dateline.
For the record, women at the minimum-security women's prison camp at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex wear prison-issue green khakis.
Stewart announced Wednesday that she wants to begin her prison stay as soon as possible rather than wait for her appeal to take its course. If the women's facility at Danbury, Conn., is full, her lawyer told the judge, "Coleman is preferable to the alternate federal prison camp for women prisoners in Alderson, W.V."
A federal low- and medium-security prison opened in Coleman in 1995, and other additions over the last nine years - including the women's camp - have made it the largest prison complex operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
It also is known for a special program that allows inmates to help train guide dogs. Stewart, who said Wednesday that she will miss her dogs, cats, canaries, horses and chickens, likely won't be able to participate in that program because her five-month sentence is too short.
The one-stoplight city of Coleman, which had 647 residents at last count, has a main street called Warm Springs Avenue and old cracker homes with wide front porches and tin roofs. Men line up for pork ribs at the D.W. Soul Barbeque on the south side, and a varied selection of wigs and flip-flops are available for sale at the convenience store on the corner.
"Only Martha Stewart," opined Maxine Cox, who works at Bobby's Cars at the town's main intersection, "would get to pick her prison."
Stewart has made no secret of her preference to serve time in Danbury, Conn. "I do hope that there will be room at the Danbury facility, which is the prison nearest to my home and close enough so that my 90-year-old mother and others can visit me," she said at her news conference.
She is requesting Coleman for similar reasons. The West Virginia facility, her lawyer wrote, "is not readily accessible. It is served by no local airports and has limited accessibility by rail."
Coleman, meanwhile, is 6 miles from an Amtrak stop at Wildwood and about an hour's drive from the Orlando International Airport.
U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum has been out of the office for the Rosh Hashana holiday since Stewart made her request. An assistant said Friday that she is not expected to return to court or deal with Stewart's request until next week.
At Coleman, the ceramic tile floors gleam, though they are a bit sterile. The potted plants in the administration building are live, not plastic, though the Wandering Jew vine in the window boxes could use some attention.
Mention the name "Martha Stewart" to a receptionist, and she shoos you to a public information officer. Mention the name to him, and he rattles off an e-mail address for a colleague in Washington, D.C.
The colleague, Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, had few details about where Stewart might be spending the winter.
"Inmate designations are based on a number of factors and are done on a case-by-case basis," she wrote in a short e-mail. "At this point we could not speculate what institution this individual would be designated to."
Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Amy Wimmer Schwarb can be reached at 352 860-7305 or wimmer@sptimes.com
