Jury selection began on Tuesday in the long-awaited trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos who faces a dozen counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Ms. Holmes, wearing a medical mask and navy blue skirt suit, with lawyers at her side, was immediately swarmed by a scrum of photographers on her arrival at the federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif. Inside the courtroom, she watched as lawyers questioned the panel of potential jurors, who were winnowed down from a list of more than 200 to around 50. The jurors sat in assigned seats that were spaced apart for the pandemic.
At the heart of the trial are questions of what exactly Ms. Holmes, 37, knew of the problems with Theranos’s blood-testing devices and whether she intentionally misled investors over the company’s technology. If convicted, she could serve up to 20 years in prison.
The case has captured public attention as another example of a Silicon Valley start-up gone wrong. But Theranos was unusual in that it was led by a female entrepreneur. Ms. Holmes exploited that difference, using it to build attention. She often wore a Steve Jobs-esque uniform of a black turtleneck and spoke in an unusually deep voice. Before Theranos fell from grace, Ms. Holmes was crowned the world’s youngest billionaire and regularly posed for magazine covers.
Her high profile may pose a challenge for jury selection. Prosecutors and her defense lawyers may find it difficult to pick...
Read Full Story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/business/elizabeth-holmes-trial-jury-selection.html
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