Legal professionals for Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and firm President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani on Tuesday urged a federal appeals courtroom to overturn their convictions for defrauding traders within the failed blood testing startup, which was once valued at $9 billion.
Amy Saharia, Holmes’ lawyer, informed a three-judge panel of the ninth US Circuit Court docket of Appeals in San Francisco that Holmes believed she was telling the reality when she informed traders that Theranos’s miniature blood testing gadget might precisely run a broad array of medical diagnostic exams on a small quantity of blood.
Holmes, who began Theranos as a university pupil and have become its public face, was indicted alongside Balwani, her former romantic partner, in 2018. The 2 had been tried individually in 2022, and sentenced later that 12 months to 11 years and three months, and 12 years and 11 months, respectively.
Saharia mentioned the trial choose improperly allowed former Theranos worker Kingshuk Das to testify as a scientific professional about Theranos’s product with out making him face cross-examination about his {qualifications}.
She additionally mentioned the choose ought to have allowed Holmes to introduce extra proof attacking one other key prosecution witness, Theranos’s former laboratory director Adam Rosendorff, together with particulars of a authorities investigation of his work after leaving Theranos that she mentioned known as his competence into query.
These errors could have made the difference in the “close” case, through which jurors weren’t capable of attain a verdict on most counts towards Holmes after seven days of deliberations.
Assistant US Legal professional Kelly Volkar, arguing for the federal government, disputed that Das had improperly testified as an professional, saying he was known as to speak about his private expertise at Theranos. She additionally mentioned that “it was not likely contested that the gadget didn’t work.”
The judges had skeptical questions for either side, and didn’t clearly point out how they might rule. Circuit Choose Ryan Nelson mentioned that, even with out the disputed testimony, “there was, it appeared to me, fairly overwhelming proof.”
Circuit Judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Mary Schroeder mentioned that a lot of Das’ testimony involved what he noticed on the firm, not his scientific opinions, as Saharia argued.
Nguyen and Nelson, nevertheless, additionally each informed Volkar that they’d issues about what opinions Das was allowed to provide in the course of the trial.
Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s lawyer, argued that prosecutors had gone past what was within the indictment towards his consumer by introducing proof that the business testing expertise Theranos secretly used was not dependable.
The judges appeared extra skeptical of that argument, although once more didn’t clearly sign how they might rule.
