Judge says Elizabeth Holmes has “pretty good cause” to appeal

The judge overseeing the appeal hearing of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes suggested she may have a chance of winning a conviction and At one point during his 11-year sentence, he filed an appeal.

One of Holmes’ lawyers appeared before a three-judge panel in the case on Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco make the case for Holmes, who was convicted in November 2022 of defrauding investors with misleading claims about Theranos technology.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, when she was 19, with the goal of revolutionizing blood testing. Holmes claimed that Theranos had developed a device that could perform dozens of tests on blood taken from a single pin prick.

The company raised $700 million from high-profile investors such as former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton. However, an exposé by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou revealed that Theranos’ blood tests did not live up to the company’s claims.

Holmes’ lawyers now argue that she did not knowingly mislead investors.

“The public narrative surrounding the spectacle of Theranos’ collapse is that the company’s technology simply did not work and Holmes knew it,” the lawyers wrote in their letter. application to court in November. “However, Holmes’s intentions and knowledge on this fundamental issue were sharply contested during the trial.”

They added: “Substantial evidence established that Holmes and Theranos scientists believed in good faith that Theranos had developed technology that could accurately perform virtually any blood test.”

Holmes’ attorney, Amy Saharia, also argued in court today that Judge Edward Davila, who presided over Holmes’ original trial, unfairly allowed former Theranos scientist Kingshuk Das to provide expert testimony to a jury about his views on Theranos technology.

NBC reporter Scott Budman published on Tuesday, X appellate court judge Ryan Nelson said: “They have a pretty good case for finding injustice in this case… There’s a pretty good story here regarding Ms. Holmes.”

The judges did not say when they would decide on the appeal.