SAN JOSE, Calif. — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has filed a motion indicating her legal team is looking for problems in the jury that convicted her in an attempt to get her guilty verdicts for fraud thrown out.
The motion, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, was written by an appeals specialist on Holmes’ 10-lawyer team, and seeks to keep the original versions of juror questionnaires sealed from public view because “the content of those questionnaires may be the subject of further litigation.”
Legal experts say the reference to legal action around the jury questionnaires suggests Holmes’ lawyers are hoping those documents could provide information about juror dishonesty or another issue affecting the fairness of her trial proceedings.
“We can see that happening right now in the Maxwell case and the Peterson case,” said San Francisco Bay Area legal analyst and former prosecutor Michele Hagan, referring to the high-profile sex-trafficking case of Ghislaine Maxwell and the blockbuster murder case of Scott Peterson, who killed his pregnant wife Laci and dumped her body in the San Francisco Bay.
Lawyers for Maxwell — who recruited teenage girls for sex with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — are expected this week to file to have her five convictions for sex trafficking and related crimes overturned. Her legal team said it found solid evidence that a juror failed to reveal his own abuse when asked in a juror questionnaire if he had ever been a victim of sexual abuse. Lawyers for Peterson are trying to overturn his convictions based on the claim that a juror failed to disclose during jury selection that a boyfriend had beaten her while she was pregnant and that she had sought a restraining order in 2000 against her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend while pregnant. The juror has denied the claim.
Holmes’ lawyers are “looking for that kind of information, which would be grounds to request a new trial,” said former Santa Clara County prosecutor Steven Clark. Lawyers for Holmes did not respond to a request for comment.
Holmes, 37, founded the Palo Alto blood-testing startup in 2003 at age 19. She was found guilty Jan. 3 of four charges of defrauding investors out of a total of $144 million. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for Sept. 26.
Her lawyers are likely trying to determine if all her jurors were honest in their questionnaire responses, Clark said. Her legal team is probably seeking to keep the original questionnaires — released earlier in redacted form concealing the identity of most jurors — sealed to keep media or other parties from contacting jurors and potentially affecting their willingness to communicate openly with representatives for Holmes, Clark said.
Holmes’ lawyers have the original questionnaires and are entitled to contact the jurors, or to hire private investigators to question them, Hagan said. Holmes’ legal team could ask her trial judge, Edward Davila, to throw out her convictions based on claimed juror misconduct, or could allege such misconduct as part of their expected appeal, Hagan added. Hagan noted that the bid to keep the original questionnaires sealed through any appeal period conflicts with the public’s First Amendment right to access government information.
Holmes’ lawyers earlier this month filed notice with Davila that they intend to seek dismissal of her convictions or a new trial under federal court rules, but did not specify the grounds they plan to claim.
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