Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos trial delayed due to possible COVID exposure

Elizabeth Holmes’ highly anticipated Theranos trial was called off Friday after a juror flagged potential exposure to COVID. Judge Edward Davila announced Thursday evening during an emergency virtual session that the session scheduled for the next day had been canceled. One of the jurors had emailed Davila that he may have been exposed to the virus but was not showing any symptoms while awaiting test results, NBC News reported.

“It’s a bit, I don’t mean to say a bad omen, but it’s concerning that before we finish the first witness, we have a problem,” Davila said.

The trial is expected to last for months with potentially more than 200 witnesses.

The opening arguments began on Wednesday, when defense attorneys for Holmes argued that the failure of healthcare startup Theranos was due to “technical” shortcomings rather than a deception by the part of its founder in disgrace. Holmes ‘attorney Lance Wade told jurors in a San Jose courtroom that the story of Theranos’ remarkable fall was “much more human and real, and often … complicated and boring,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Holmes is charged with several counts of conspiracy and fraud over allegations she made about the company’s supposedly groundbreaking blood testing invention. Investigations revealed that the technology had serious problems. In just a few short years, Theranos has grown from $ 9 billion worth to one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious stories of the decade.

“For lack of time, for lack of money, Elizabeth Holmes decided to lie,” Assistant US Attorney Robert Leach told the 12 members of the jury on Wednesday.

Defense attorneys later countered that Theranos investors were well aware of the risks involved in supporting the startup.

The courtroom drama has been going on for more than three years, with Holmes initially being indicted in June 2018. The start of the trial has also been repeatedly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the birth of the child of Holmes on July 10 of this year. .

Discussions are currently scheduled to resume on Tuesday. Here’s what to know about one of the biggest trials of the decade to date.

What happened to Holmes and Theranos?

In 2003, Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to found Theranos with the goal of disrupting the blood-testing industry. The company said it was developing proprietary technology that required gathering a smaller amount of blood than a conventional intravenous draw and was more portable than traditional tests sent off to a lab.

Theranos began to see more mainstream attention in 2013 when it signed up Walgreens and Safeway as potential customers. At one point the startup was valued at more than $9 billion.

Holmes began to appear on the cover of various publications, including Fortune, sometimes drawing comparisons to Steve Jobs for her seeming powers of disruption and a penchant for high-necked black tops.

But the fortunes of both Holmes and Theranos began to change in 2015 when The Wall Street Journal took a deeper look into the company. The Journal reported that only a small portion of tests were being done with the company’s testing machine, named Edison, and that many tests were being run on other companies’ machines, using diluted blood samples. The accuracy of test results that patients received from Theranos was also called into question.

All this led to the charges filed against Holmes in 2018, a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the permanent shuttering of Theranos shortly thereafter.

A 2019 documentary, a book called Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou and multiple podcasts about the company’s precipitous fall helped bring mainstream attention to the story.

Former Theranos employee and whistleblower Tyler Shultz spoke with CNET in 2020 about the whole saga.

What is Holmes charged with?

Holmes is formally charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 10 counts of wire fraud.

“The charges stem from [Holmes’] allegedly misleading representations about [Theranos] and its medical testing technology, ”a statement from the United States District Court in Northern California read.

Basically, Holmes is accused of lying to patients about how the company’s blood tests work and how effective they are. Some of the accusations also concern Holmes who allegedly misled investors about the inner workings of Theranos and the revenue the company was expected to generate.

If found guilty, Holmes could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

What is Holmes’ version of the story?

Although Holmes denied that the claims made by the original Journal report were true, she never told her side of the story in depth from that point on.

“This is what happens when you work to make a difference,” Holmes told CNBC’s Mad Money in 2015. “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden suddenly, you change the world. ”

The 37-year-old is said to have entered into a book deal to publicize her story. The book never materialized, but a widely acclaimed HBO documentary About the collapse of Theranos, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley from director Alex Gibney was released in 2019. It didn’t portray Holmes in a flattering light and she didn’t cooperate with the filmmakers, so his perspective on the events of the past half-decade remains largely a mystery.

Holmes’ lawyers come from the powerful Washington company that defended President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial. One possibility is that they will say that she followed something like the Silicon Valley philosophy of “pretend until you do” and that she always believed in the long-term potential of the company and its technology to finally keep its promises.

According to the Wall Street Journal, lawyers for Holmes said she could claim that “she believed all the misrepresentations were true and, therefore, that Theranos was a legitimate business generating value for investors.”

There were hints of that defense in opening statements on Wednesday, when Wade called the company’s technology “real” and “innovative.”

August 28, newly unsealed court documents suggested Holmes could seek to defend herself by alleging that she had suffered psychological, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of former Theranos president and ex-boyfriend Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, and that as a result of her submission to him, she believed the alleged fraudulent statements she had made were true.

This strategy was also foreshadowed in Wednesday’s arguments in which Wade referred to Balwani’s temper and promised that more related evidence would be presented during the trial.

Balwani’s lawyers called the abuse allegations “scandalous.” One of the documents filed by Holmes’ attorneys indicated that she was likely to testify.

We’ll see soon if Holmes finally steps up to say his side of things.

How can I watch the trial?

The trial officially began on Tuesday, with opening pleadings the next day. There will be no online stream of the trial and television cameras will not be allowed in the courtroom, so the best way to follow the case will be through reporters in the room taking notes. old.

In total, more than 200 potential witnesses have been identified between the prosecution and the defense, so it is possible that testimony will drag on for weeks.

Balwani faces similar charges in a separate trial scheduled for next year.

Holmes and Balwani have pleaded not guilty.