NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The federal judge overseeing Martha Stewart's legal case has delayed her sentencing hearing until July 8, her lawyers said Monday.

Read the indictment • U.S. v Stewart, Bacanovic (PDF)

Stewart and her former Merrill Lynch broker, Peter Bacanovic, were convicted March 5 of obstructing justice during a government probe into some of her personal stock sales. They were due to be sentenced June 17. Bacanovic's sentencing was also delayed. Legal experts have said they each face a year or more in prison.

The delayed sentencing hearing comes more than two weeks after government prosecutors charged a key witness with lying while testifying at her trial. Stewart's lawyers are expected to file a motion for a new trial this week.

"Any legal source will tell you that the judge obviously realizes there is an issue here," one of Stewart's lawyers told CNN/Money.

Bradford Lewis, a former assistant U.S. attorney, cautioned against reading too much into the delay.

"It's not that uncommon for sentencings to get delayed," said Lewis, now a partner at Fenwick & West, a law firm in Palo Alto, Calif. "This doesn't mean that she's going to win [a new trial]. It just means the judge takes [the government's perjury case] very seriously."

In a complaint filed May 21 in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors accused Larry Stewart, a Secret Service ink expert, of lying in his testimony at the trial of Martha Stewart and Bacanovic.

Correction An earlier version of this story misstated the filing date of the Larry Stewart complaint. The complaint was filed May 21, 2004. We regret the error.

The testimony related to pen ink that seemed to help prove a key point in the government's case against Stewart and Bacanovic: that the duo tried to cover their tracks in the weeks after Stewart sold her stock in ImClone Systems (IMCL: up $1.69 to $82.41, Research, Estimates) in late 2001, allegedly after receiving an inside tip.

Larry Stewart, no relation to Martha, testified that a notation Bacanovic had made on a worksheet -- "@60" -- was made with different ink than the other ink on the sheet. The testimony was important since Stewart and Bacanovic claimed they had a pre-existing agreement to sell her ImClone stock if the price dropped below $60 a share.

In court papers, prosecutors said Larry Stewart lied about his role in the underlying ink analysis but did not challenge his testimony that the pen marks were made at a different time than other pen marks on the worksheet.

In light of the government's perjury charges, legal experts were split on whether Martha Stewart and Bacanovic would win a new trial.

Some criminal defense lawyers said Stewart, the fallen lifestyle maven and founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO: down $0.19 to $9.64, Research, Estimates), stood a good chance of getting her conviction overturned and receiving a second trial.

Other experts were more skeptical.

They argued that Larry Stewart's testimony, while significant, was not so central to her conviction to warrant a new trial. They noted that Bacanovic was acquitted on a separate charge that he falsified the worksheet, which seemed to indicate that the jury did not rely heavily on Larry Stewart's testimony in reaching its guilty verdicts against Stewart and Bacanovic.

Stewart's New York defense lawyers, Robert Morvillo and John Tigue, said in a statement posted on www.marthatalks.com, that their motion for a new trial will contend that the jury was "unfairly affected" by Larry Stewart's alleged perjury.

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They called the expected motion a supplement to an earlier bid they made for a new trial on the grounds that a juror, Chappell Hartridge, had lied about his past during jury selection. The judge in Martha's trial, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, rejected that motion in May.

If Cedarbaum also denies the new motion for a new trial, Martha Stewart's lawyers are expected to file an appeal based on both the juror misconduct charges and the government's recent perjury case against Larry Stewart. An appeal would not delay Martha Stewart's sentencing.

Lewis, the former prosecutor, said Stewart's second request for a new trial "is on much stronger grounds for a possible appeal or new trial" than the earlier requested related to the allegations of juror conduct. "That was not a significant issue."