Jury in the Elizabeth Holmes trial deliberately for a fourth day
SAN JOSE, California – Jurors began a fourth day on Monday with deliberations in the fraud case against Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed startup of blood tests Theranos.
Ms. Holmes, 37, is facing 11 cases of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud due to allegations that she lied about Theranos’ technology while seeking investment and business for her startup. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison for each case of wire fraud.
A jury of eight men and four women discussed Monday, Tuesday and Thursday last week without reaching a verdict.
On Thursday, they asked to hear footage of a conversation Holmes had with investors, in which she allegedly made misleading allegations about Theranos’ partnership with pharmaceutical companies and the military.
The jury’s deliberations follow a nearly four-month trial that is seen as a referendum on the worst excesses in Silicon Valley’s start-up culture. Before Theranos collapsed, Ms. Holmes a highly famous female founder. She dropped out of Stanford University at the age of 19 to focus on her company and spent the next decade raising nearly $ 1 billion from investors.
In 2015, Theranos began to dissolve after a Wall Street Journal survey revealed that the company had relied on commercially available machines to perform many of its blood tests, rather than its own supposedly revolutionary devices. Theranos resigned in 2018, the same year that Holmes was indicted.
During the trial, federal prosecutors have sought to prove that Holmes deliberately deceived investors, patients and commercial partners by falsifying validation reports, false demonstrations and misrepresenting Theranos to the media and the public.
“She chose fraud over business failure,” said Jeffrey Schenk, an assistant U.S. attorney, during the government’s closing argument.
Ms. Holmes, who took a stand for seven days in her own defense, has tried to portray herself as a well-meaning entrepreneur who believed in her own claims and was led astray by those around her.
“She thought she was building a technology that would change the world,” said Kevin Downey, a lawyer for Ms. Holmes.