If notorious fraudster loses appeal, she could take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but statistically has a poor shot at a hearing there.
www.siliconvalley.com
6/4/24
Imprisoned Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes’ appeal is set to be heard June 11 in San Francisco federal court.
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Holmes’ legal team and the prosecution are set to argue the case at 9 a.m. in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She launched
her appeal in late 2022, 11 months after
a jury convicted her on four felony counts of defrauding Theranos investors. She is seeking to have her conviction and 11-year prison sentence overturned, which would trigger a new trial.
Lawyers for Holmes, 40, said in a December 2022 court filing that the criminal case tried at U.S. District Court in San Jose that resulted in guilty verdicts was “teeming with issues for appeal.”
Among those issues, her legal team claimed, were purported errors by Judge Edward Davila, who oversaw her case and trial. Holmes alleged that Davila improperly allowed the jury to hear about regulatory action against Theranos and about her company’s voiding of all test results from its problem-plagued “Edison” machines. Those events came after any “relevant” statements Holmes made to investors, and the jury should not have been allowed to hear about them, Holmes’ lawyers argued.
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Updates from the prisons bureau show she has
shaved about two years off her sentence and is scheduled to be freed in August 2032. Federal inmates can cut 54 days off their prison terms for each year of their sentences if they meet conduct standards and may cut additional sentence time by completing recidivism-reduction and “productive activities” programs, according to the bureau.
Holmes will not appear at the hearing in person or via video, as only attorneys are typically present before the three-judge panel that hears oral arguments in federal court appeals, and the court does not arrange for incarcerated people to appear, a court spokesman said Tuesday.
Federal criminal appeals
succeed at very low rates, according to the federal courts system. If Holmes loses, she could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but its justices only hear about 100 to 150 appeals per year of the more than 7,000 it is typically asked to review,
according to the courts system.