No prison yet for Elizabeth Holmes following last-ditch appeal

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes won’t go to jail this week, regardless of a decide’s order that she start serving her 11-year sentence on Thursday.

Late Tuesday, Holmes’ attorneys appealed that ruling to the U.S. 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Under the courtroom’s guidelines, which means Holmes will stay free on bail for now.

Holmes, 39, has two kids, the primary of whom was born earlier than her fraud trial in 2021. The second was born after her November sentencing.

A federal jury in San Jose, California, convicted Holmes final 12 months on 4 counts of defrauding buyers in her failed blood-testing firm. In November, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila sentenced her to 11 years and three months in jail. Holmes’ attorneys requested that she be allowed to stay free on bail whereas she appeals her conviction, however earlier this month Davila denied that movement and ordered her to report back to jail by April 27.

In their last-minute attraction, Holmes’ attorneys stated Davila’s ruling contained “numerous, inexplicable errors,” together with referring to “patient fraud counts” when Holmes was acquitted on the fees that she defrauded Theranos sufferers. They say she ought to be allowed to stay free whereas she appeals her conviction as a result of the attraction is “likely to result in reversal.” The authorities has 10 days to answer the movement.

Federal prosecutors have opposed Holmes’ efforts to stay free. In January, they argued Holmes was a flight danger, noting that she had booked a one-way flight to Mexico shortly earlier than she was convicted. Davila agreed with protection attorneys that the airplane ticket episode was merely an oversight, however he dominated that her attraction was unlikely to alter the result of the case.

While Tuesday’s movement retains Holmes out of jail for now, it could solely be a quick reprieve. Holmes’ mentor and former boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, convicted in a separate trial final 12 months, additionally sought to stay free pending his attraction, and he appealed to the 9^th Circuit when Davila denied his movement. But the appeals courtroom turned down his request inside three weeks. Last week, Balwani, 57, reported to a low-security federal jail in Los Angeles to start serving his practically 13-year sentence.

Holmes’ attraction of her conviction, filed final week, argues that Holmes couldn’t have knowingly misrepresented her supposedly “revolutionary” blood-testing know-how to buyers as a result of she genuinely believed the product labored.

“Highly credentialed Theranos scientists told Holmes in real time the technology worked. Outsiders who reviewed the technology said it worked. Theranos’ groundbreaking developments received many patents,” the attraction stated.

Her attorneys argued that the federal government’s case “largely parroted the public narrative,” first specified by a collection of damaging Wall Street Journal articles in 2015, that Holmes knowingly dedicated fraud.

The attraction challenges a number of rulings by Davila on proof and witnesses, together with permitting a former Theranos lab director to testify as an skilled witness. This week, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed a quick in help of Holmes’ attraction.

The group argued that the federal government abused the principles on skilled testimony in Holmes’ case, and that it’s a part of a development.

“This sleight of hand is, regrettably, common,” lawyer Brian Goldman wrote. “The government has previously subverted the requirements of the federal rules, and blurred the distinction between expert and lay testimony.”

The authorities has till May 3 to answer Holmes’ attraction of the conviction.