New York ? Martha Stewart will be sentenced today and learn whether she will have to trade the tastefully tinted walls of her home for the spare cinderblocks of a prison cell.

Experts on federal sentencing expect Stewart to get between 10 and 16 months in prison — although she may be allowed to remain free while she appeals her conviction.

Since the celebrity homemaker was found guilty March 5 of lying about a 2001 stock sale, hundreds of fans have flooded the judge with letters begging for leniency.

“This woman is to homemakers what Einstein was to science and Freud was to psychiatry,” wrote Eleanor Flomenhaft, of Hewlett Harbor, N.Y.

Stewart, 62, and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, were convicted of lying to investigators about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems stock in December 2001, just before the price plunged.

Prosecutors said it was because of a tip that now-jailed ImClone CEO Sam Waksal was selling his shares of the pharmaceutical company. Stewart and the broker maintained they had already planned to sell the stock at a particular price.

Sentencing is up to federal Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who presided over Stewart’s trial this year.

If she orders a prison sentence, Stewart’s lawyers are expected to ask the judge to delay incarceration while they challenge the conviction.

Defense lawyers, in sealed papers, have asked Cedarbaum for a sentence of community service, according to a person close to the case who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Timothy Hoeffner, a Philadelphia white-collar attorney not involved in the case, said the judge was unlikely to deviate from the guidelines — and at least some prison time — given the case’s high profile and the current backlash against corporate fraud.

The Bureau of Prisons would determine where Stewart does her time, most likely a minimum-security women’s facility in Danbury, Conn., or Alderson, W.Va.

The judge also could let Stewart and Bacanovic serve as much as half of their sentences in halfway houses or in home confinement — a punishment that would require them to wear electronic-monitoring devices.

Stewart lawyer Robert Morvillo will argue on appeal that the conviction is tainted by what he has called lies told by a juror to get on the panel, and a perjury indictment against one of the government’s trial witnesses.

Cedarbaum already has turned down two requests for new trials filed by Stewart and Bacanovic. In the most recent decision, the judge said “overwhelming independent evidence” supports the guilty verdict.

Criminal defendants can speak in court just before sentencing, and many apologize for their crimes and ask the court for mercy.

But Stewart — who has not spoken out in court since pleading not guilty — is unlikely to make such a statement because it could jeopardize her appeal, legal observers say.

“She has to be consistent in proclaiming her innocence,” Hoeffner said. “… I don’t expect to see her sitting and acknowledging guilt and breaking down and crying in court.”