Theranos founder Holmes’ trial will be delayed again
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will not go before a jury on felony fraud charges this fall as scheduled.
Her trial was originally set to start in just over a week and was then re-scheduled to begin in October. But on Monday, the judge presiding over the case in U.S. District Court in San Jose nixed the fall date, citing the risks the coronavirus pandemic poses to participants.
“It is unrealistic that we’re going to go to trial on that date,” Judge Edward Davila said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
Holmes, a Stanford University dropout who launched her Palo Alto blood-testing startup in 2003, is charged with 11 fraud counts. She and former company president Sunny Balwani are accused of defrauding doctors and hundreds of patients and with bilking investors out of more than $700 million. Prosecutors allege the two falsely claimed their machines could conduct a full range of tests using a few drops of blood from a finger-stick, when they knew the technology was inaccurate and unreliable. Holmes and Balwani have denied the allegations, with lawyers for Holmes arguing in a December court filing that the government’s case was “unconstitutionally vague” and lacked specific claims of misrepresentation. Davila, who said Monday
that he was alone in the courtroom “with a laptop, a pencil and a pad,” conducted the proceedings via video-conference, with participants including Holmes — in a gray blazer, sitting in front of a white door beside a window — appearing virtually.
“I look out and I try to envision what a jury trial for three months would look like here,” Davila said. Among the judge’s concerns was how keeping trial participants safely apart in a courtroom might affect the ability of a juror sitting in the back of the room to assess the credibility of a witness seen from an indirect angle, and affect Holmes’ right to a fair trial. “I don’t know what is the Constitutional ramification of that,” Davila said.
Still, Davila said, “You probably understand the reticence I might have to take the foot off the gas pedal. That just makes the finish line more obscure.”
After Davila asked the defense and prosecution about the fall start date, Lance Wade, a lawyer for Holmes, said a new date should be chosen to ensure the proceedings are safe for all involved, “but also safe from a Constitutional standpoint where our client has all of the rights that she’s entitled to, given that her liberty is in jeopardy.”
Prosecutors have identified 170 witnesses from more than a dozen states who it plans to have testify, and many come from coronavirus hotspots such as Arizona, Texas, Georgia and Florida, Wade said. Current federal health guidance suggests that any witness who flies to California should quarantine for two weeks before testifying, Wade said.
Also, the four counties from which jurors will be drawn are all currently on the State of California’s coronavirus watch list, and school closures could affect jury selection, he added.