Waiting for Key Witness in Martha Stewart Trial
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Waiting for the key witness. Doug Faneuil is expected to take the stand shortly to testify about what he knows about Martha Stewart apparently, supposedly dumping a lot of stock just before it tanked. Let's get the latest now from CNN's Alan Chernoff. He's outside the federal courthouse in New York. What is the latest, Alan?</s>ALAN CHERNOFF, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, it's really been a waiting game for Douglas Faneuil, the assistant to Martha Stewart's stockbroker. And he's likely to keep waiting for several more hours, because on the stand right now is the administrative manager of that Merrill Lynch office in Rockefeller Center where Martha Stewart had her brokerage account. Now, the government has been using this witness to build its case. Let's step back a minute. Martha Stewart and her stockbroker and co-defendant, Peter Bacanovic, say the reason Martha Stewart sold her ImClone stock was that they had a prior agreement to sell if the stock fell below $60 a share. Of course, now, the prosecution says Martha Stewart sold because she found out that Sam Waksal, the former chief of ImClone, was trying to dump his stock. So what the government did this morning was, they showed examples of Martha Stewart's stock trading style. Specifically, that she had placed limit orders with her stockbroker. A limit order is when you say, I'm going to sell that stock if it falls to a certain price. And so, they showed evidence that she had placed limit orders for her own company's stock, for JDS Uniphase, for Community Health Systems. The whole idea here is to convince the jury that if in fact she did have a prior agreement with her stockbroker to sell ImClone at $60 or below, then she would have had a limit order. But she didn't. She did not have a limit order. So that is going to be a key point that the government will be hammering home with a jury -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Alan Chernoff will be watching all of this for us, as he always does. Thanks, Alan, very much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com