Elizabeth Holmes jurors hear different takes on downfall
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jurors in the case of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes on Thursday heard starkly different interpretations of her motives and actions as her long-running criminal trial nears the finish line.
A federal prosecutor cast Holmes as a desperate con artist who brazenly lied to get rich, while her lawyer depicted her as a well-meaning entrepreneur who never stopped trying to perfect Theranos’ blood-testing technology and deliver on her pledge to improve health care.
The closing arguments are the final act in a threemonth-old trial revolving around allegations that Holmes duped investors, business partners and patients into believing that Theranos had invented a more humane, quicker and cheaper way to test blood. The case could be handed over to the jury Friday.
Prosecutor Jeff Schenk opened his closing argument by painting a sordid portrait of Holmes, once a Silicon Valley billionaire — on paper — now trying to avoid conviction on fraud charges that could result in a 20-year prison sentence.
As he methodically walked the jury through the testimony of the 29 witnesses called by the government, Schenk emphasized that Holmes had a critical choice to make on several occasions during her 15-year reign running Theranos. Holmes could have acknowledged troubling flaws in Theranos’ blood-testing technology, Schenk contended, but she covered them up instead as part of her pursuit of fame and fortune.
“She chose fraud over business failure,” Schenk told the jury at the outset of a three-hour presentation. “She chose to be dishonest. This choice was not only callous; it was criminal.”
Holmes’ lawyer, Kevin Downey, quickly countered that assertion when he got his turn to sway the jury.
“Elizabeth Holmes was building a business and not a criminal enterprise,” Downey said before trying to convince the jury that the federal government had presented a distorted snapshot of her dealings at Theranos.
Instead of relying on needles to draw vials of blood from a vein, Holmes spent years promising Theranos would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other health problems with just a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.
It was such a compelling concept that Theranos raised more than $900 million, struck partnerships with major retailers Walgreens and Safeway and turned Elizabeth Holmes into the subject of cover stories on business magazines.
But unknown to most people outside Theranos, the company’s blood-testing technology was flawed, often producing inaccurate results that could have endangered the lives of patients who took the tests at Walgreens stores.
After the flaws were exposed in 2015 and 2016, Theranos eventually collapsed and the Justice Department filed a criminal case in 2018 that charged Holmes with 11 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy.
While Schenk made the case for conviction, Holmes peered at both the prosecutor and the jurors from across a packed courtroom in San Jose, California. Just a few feet behind her, Holmes’ mother and current partner, Billy Evans, sat in the front row listening intently, as did Holmes’ father, who hadn’t previously attended the trial in the presence of the jury.
Schenk occasionally played recordings of separate conversations Holmes had with a group of Theranos investors in December 2013 and with a Fortune magazine reporter in May 2014. In both recordings, Holmes makes a series of inaccurate and exaggerated comments about the capabilities of Theranos’ technology and purported contracts with the U.S. military that never materialized.
In other evidence displayed by Schenk, Holmes distorted the scope and prospects of partnerships that Theranos had allegedly struck with Walgreens and major drug makers such as Pfizer.
“You should find her guilty, but you shouldn’t find her guilty because of my words,“Schenk said. “You should find her guilty because of her words.“
In his presentation, Downey urged jurors to carefully pore through evidence that includes more than 900 exhibits to get a fuller picture and understanding of what she was trying to do. He pointed to contracts that Theranos had with several pharmaceutical companies that the government didn’t mention during its case as a example of the half-baked story that he said prosecutors presented.
The prosecution focused at a series of events at Theranos that “look bad, but at the end of the day when all the evidence flows together, isn’t that bad,“Downey said.