The story of Elizabeth Holmes now belongs to the jury

Lawyers Make Closing Arguments In Elizabeth Holmes Theranos Trial

The story of Elizabeth Holmes now belongs to the panel

They'll decide whether or not she was the one in control

By Celestial latitude 17, 2021, 8:10pm EST

From the beginning, Elizabeth Holmes knew how to tell a funny. She launched her blood testing caller, Theranos, with a tale of a powerful vision to revolutionize health care and change an old, outdated industriousness. She presented herself as Steve Jobs, component part two. She sketched out a picture of someone in assure.

That Holmes, and that story, is what prosecuting attorne John Bostic worked to reset back to during his rebuttal controversy, the endure word before the case went to the panel on Friday afternoon. It wasn't rational to think the CEO of a company didn't love exactly what impression she was giving to investors, Bostic said. It was clear she knew active problems with the Theranos tests. Holmes knew that the technology wasn't working as intended, and that Theranos might not be able to change the world. When that story started to fall apart, she tried and true anything she could to try and keep back it in concert.

"We look up to people WHO set ambitious goals and set dead set reach them," Bostic said. "Instead, we assure a CEO of a company then desperate for success, so afraid of failure, that she was willing to do anything to keep on that company from failing."

But in the closing arguments of her trial for role playe, which wrapped prepared Friday, her Department of Defense attorney Kevin Downey too told a story. This story was about a symptomless-meaning Chief executive officer World Health Organization trusted what experts told her, who didn't know about problems at her company, and World Health Organization couldn't be faulted if people misinterpreted the things she told them about Theranos. It relied along undercutting the origin story in prescribe to convince the jury that she wasn't bloodguilty of the charges against her.

To find her guilty of those charges — electrify fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fake — the jury has to believe Holmes motivated to give people misleading information about what the Theranos applied science could DO. That spirit matters, Downey stressed through his closing arguments.

Figuring knocked out that absorbed takes acquiring inside Oliver Wendell Holmes' head during the multiplication she lied or said things that could be misleading. When Holmes told investors and reporters that the Theranos devices could outpouring hundreds of accurate tests, Downey said she actually was referring to what the company was going to embody able-bodied to do in the futurity, along future iterations of the Theranos device.

And when Holmes told investor Bryan Tolbert, vice president of finance for TX-based Hall Group, that the company was "doing a lot of work" with the study, she didn't entail that Theranos devices were actively in use in the military — just that the company was employed towards that finish. (Investors say Holmes told them the company's devices were secondhand in Afghanistan and along medevacs.)

If investors got the wrong idea, well, that was because they misinterpreted things, Downey aforementioned. And, even if they did misinterpret things, that didn't actually matter, he said. Those types of statements from Holmes weren't why investors decided to give Theranos money. Holmes and the things she said weren't actually that critical to the decision making process, Downey said. Investors just cared that Theranos had a partnership with Walgreens. (Multiple investors said they trusted the stories Holmes told them all but Theranos' capabilities.)

Holmes also couldn't be responsible for any problems with the Theranos technology, Downey aforesaid. Other people were responsible — equivalent former Theranos research laboratory music director Hug dru Rosendorff. Sherlock Holmes thought the tests were accurate. She byword positive reviews from satisfied customers, and the ship's company apologized any time there was an error. She had nobelium reason to think there were any issues that she requisite to be afraid about, Downey said. (In fact, Theranos' scientists repeatedly flagged serious issues to Holmes in emails revealed throughout the test.)

Holmes didn't behave as someone who had something to enshroud, Downey said. She hired a high-profile circuit card of directors — a former secretary of state, a former senator, a retired Marine Army corps four-star general. She allowed people from dose companies and academic institutions to scrutinize her companion's tech. She gave information to the Food and Drug Organisation. And, when tidings reports and a Union investigation found problems with her labs, she doubled down on work to figure retired what went immoral.

"You know that at the first sign of trouble, crooks cash out, criminals cover, and rats take flight a sinking feeling ship," Downey said. But Holmes was a dedicated CEO who believed that her company was going to change the world. Instead of running, she brought in experts to scrutinize the testing program, Downey notable. "Are those the actions of someone who had been busy in a confederacy to defraud people?"

There are versions of Holmes everywhere: there's the ane she offered in media interviews, the ones sketched out in podcasts, the united that will make up fictionalized in the upcoming Hulu serial. Over the past leash months, there have been 2 more, presented by prosecutors and DoD attorneys. Now, those versions attend the jurors. It's capable them to decide which story is the closest to world — and if that reality is vicious.