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[Follow live news coverage on the trial of Elizabeth Holmes.]
The substantial-stakes demo of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the collapsed healthcare start off-up Theranos, is headed towards a remarkable complete. The most recent twist came on Friday, when Ms. Holmes unexpectedly took the stand in her own protection, just after the prosecution rested its circumstance.
She testified for an hour, and is continuing now. Ms. Holmes has been billed with 11 counts of fraud and faces up to 20 decades in jail on every single rely. She has pleaded not responsible.
Whether Ms. Holmes would testify had been one particular of the major inquiries of the trial. Up until eventually Friday afternoon, several authorized specialists predicted that she would not. The added benefits of undertaking so, the gurus argued, could be offset by the threats of cross-examination.
At first, her testimony elevated considerations for her defense. Her lawyers’ tactic has been to paint her as inexperienced, led astray by many others like her previous boyfriend and business enterprise associate Sunny Balwani (who is getting experimented with independently).
But on the stand, Ms. Holmes depicted herself as very substantially in handle. She introduced herself as an expert in the technology Theranos was creating and in-depth how she used that expertise to appeal to investors, whose revenue would inevitably be wiped out.
She also rebutted a key argument by prosecutors. The prosecution sought to set up that Ms. Holmes withheld information and facts, significantly monetary experiences, from buyers.
On the stand, Holmes specific the “very complete diligence process” of Don Lucas, a undertaking capitalist who ultimately invested in Theranos and turned its chairman. The defense introduced a 2006 e-mail in which Ms. Holmes sent Mr. Lucas specific monetary data. (Nonetheless, this may possibly undermine yet another defense argument: that traders were careless and at minimum partially to blame.)
The demo is also a referendum on Silicon Valley’s get started-up lifestyle. If Ms. Holmes is identified guilty, it would put fact-stretching begin-up founders on observe. But if she is acquitted, it would bolster the tech industry’s “fake it til you make it” tactic.
“A non-guilty verdict will vindicate a Silicon Valley culture of celebrating intense innovation at the cost of the total and full truth of the matter,” said Jeffrey Cohen of Boston Faculty Legislation College.
