Theranos trial: Jurors end fifth day of deliberations without verdict

Jurors ended a fifth day of deliberations Tuesday without a verdict in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, who is accused of defrauding investors, patients and advertisers when she served as CEO of Theranos, a blood-testing startup.

Ms Holmes, (37) faces nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each wire fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. A jury of eight men and four women deliberated for three days last week and for around seven hours Monday before returning Tuesday. Deliberations were scheduled to resume Wednesday morning in federal court in San Jose, California. Last week, the jurors listened to audio recordings of Ms Holmes talking to investors. Prosecutors had highlighted the recorded call as a time when Ms Holmes misrepresented Theranos’ relationship with pharmaceutical companies and the military. The deliberations have added over a week to Holmes’ trial, which for nearly four months has been scrutinized as a test of startup culture. As Theranos’ CEO, Ms Holmes exemplified the myth of the genius founder. She founded the startup in 2003, dropped out of Stanford the next year and raised $945 million from investors on the promise that her company would revolutionize blood testing.

In 2015, that myth unravelled after a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Theranos’ technology did not live up to Ms Holmes’ lofty claims. The company shut down in 2018, the year Ms Holmes was indicted by the federal government. Over three months of testimony, prosecutors put 29 witnesses on the stand, trying to overwhelm the jury with evidence to support the fraud charges. They showed jurors misleading validation reports, inaccurate ads and emails in which Theranos employees discussed faking technology demonstrations.

Ms Holmes' defence was anchored by her own testimony. She took the stand for seven days, pointing blame at her employees and saying she believed that Theranos' technology "performed well." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.