A panel of federal judges spent two hours Tuesday grappling with a series of legal issues that emerged in an effort to overturn a fraud conviction that sent Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to prison after a meteoric rise to stardom Silicon Valley.
The hearing at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco took place almost two and a half years later a jury convicted Holmes of orchestrating a blood test scam that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley. Holmes’s deception tool was Theranos, a Palo Alto, California, startup that she founded shortly after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003 with her sights set on revolutionizing healthcare.
Holmes, who did not attend the hearing, is currently present serving an 11-year prison sentence in a prison in Bryan, Texas.
But Holmes’ parents and her partner – the father of her two young children – Billy Evans sat in the front row of the courtroom listening intently to the oral arguments. All three federal prosecutors who presented the Justice Department’s case during the original four-month trial were in the audience in the courtroom, including two attorneys – Jeffrey Schenk and John Bostic – who have since gone on to work for private law firms .
Three appeals court judges — Jacqueline Nguyen, Ryan Nelson and Mary Schroeder — gave little guidance on whether they leaned toward upholding or overturning Holmes’ conviction. However, they frequently made it clear that it would take compelling evidence to overturn the jury’s verdict.
Nelson seemed the most torn of the three judges and showed some sympathy when Holmes’ attorney Amy Saharia said the outcome of her trial deserved scrutiny because the jury also acquitted her on four other charges of fraud and conspiracy and was incapable of to come to a judgement. three other counts.
Before the hearing adjourned, Nguyen said a ruling would be made “in due course,” without giving a specific timetable. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to more than a year for appellate courts to rule on appeals involving criminal convictions.
Holmes will remain in prison, with a scheduled release date of August 2032 – rather than her full sentence because of her good behavior so far.
A decade ago, Theranos had become so popular in the healthcare industry that several prominent people, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, called it an example of American ingenuity. Holmes had become a media sensation with a fortune worth $4.5 billion.
The excitement stemmed from Holmes’ claim that Theranos-designed devices could scan a few drops of human blood for hundreds of potential diseases. But the devices produced unreliable results that both Holmes and her former business partner and lover at the time, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, tried to conceal.
Once the technology’s glaring flaws were exposed, Theranos collapsed in a scandal that led to criminal charges against both Holmes and Balwani. Prosecutors hoped to break a “fake it till you make it” mentality adopted by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs hoping to get rich with products that still contained bugs.
In addition to hearing from Holmes’ lawyers Tuesday, the panel of appellate judges also heard arguments from another flank of lawyers representing Balwani, who is seeking to get the 13-year prison sentence he received following his July 2022 conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges in a separate to undo the matter. process.
Balwani, 58, claims federal prosecutors distorted evidence to favor the jury against him while weaving a different narrative than the one they presented during Holmes’ trial, which concluded shortly before it began in March 2022. Unlike Holmes, Balwani was convicted of all twelve crimes of fraud and conspiracy he faced, a factor that contributed to his longer prison sentence. He is currently scheduled to be released from a federal prison in Southern California in November 2033.
