"She passed around coffee and doughnuts to reporters gathered outside her property. And she strolled from building to building on the grounds, wearing a long winter-white coat and clearly displaying a happy mood, even waving to a helicopter hovering 1,000 feet overhead.
"It is the most freedom she will have until early August. Ms. Stewart, who must complete five months of home confinement as the next part of her sentence, has until Sunday to report to her federal probation officer. She is to be fitted with a plastic monitoring device, which she will wear on one ankle, that will allow probation officials to track her movements. The probation department will also install a transmitter in her house, said Chris Stanton, chief probation officer for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
"Then the truly restrictive aspects of home confinement begin. Ms. Stewart will be confined to a single building, almost certainly the main house on the 153-acre expanse at the corner of Maple Avenue and Girdle Ridge Road in Bedford that she has spent the last three years restoring, sometimes to the annoyance of local zoning officials.
"She may have her dogs at her side, but she is not allowed to go outside to walk them. She can keep chickens, but she is not permitted in the henhouse. She may have a garden, but she herself cannot dig in the dirt."
-- Constance L. Hays, Home Sweet Home Confinement, The New York Times, today.
Image from The New York Times.
