Lawyers for the founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, and the company’s president, Ramesh Balwani, filed a request to annul the fraud convictions of investors in the blood testing startup. Theranos was once valued at US$9 billion.
According to Reuters, Amy Saharia, Holmes’ lawyer, argued before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that Holmes believed she was telling the truth when she told investors that the blood testing device developed by Theranos met the proposed objective, which was to accurately perform a “hundreds” of medical analyses. diagnostic tests on small amounts of blood.
Amy Saharia challenged the testimony of a former Theranos employee, Kingshuk Das, who was questioned as a scientific expert on the Theranos product. The lawyer also contended that the judge should have allowed Holmes to present more evidence attacking another key prosecution witness, former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, including details of a government investigation of his work after leaving Theranos that, according to her, she questioned her competence. Saharia argued that these errors could have made the difference in the “closed” case, in which jurors were unable to reach a verdict on most counts against Holmes after seven days of deliberations.
Ramesh Balwani’s lawyer, Jeffrey Coopersmith, questioned the prosecutors’ actions, claiming that they presented evidence that the commercial testing technology that Theranos secretly used was not trustworthy, which would be beyond the scope of the accusation against his client.
On the other side, Assistant US Attorney Kelly Volkar argued that Das was called to report his personal experience at Theranos.
On the judges’ side, Ryan Nelson relativized the contested testimony, stating that, even without it, “there was, it seemed to me, pretty damning evidence.” In turn, Judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Mary Schroeder framed Das’ testimony as observations while he was at the company and not scientific opinions.
Holmes and Balwani were tried separately in 2022 and sentenced later that year to 11 years and three months and 12 years. years and 11 months, respectively.