Former Theranos President Ramesh Balwani Wants a New Trial If His Former Partner Elizabeth Holmes Gets One
- The Indian American has asked a federal judge to allow him to participate in efforts by his ex to get a new hearing.
Former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani wants to be granted a new trial if his former girlfriend and business partner Elizabeth Holmes gets one. On Oct. 6, Balwani’s attorneys asked a federal judge to allow their client to participate in Holmes’ efforts to get a new trial. efforts by his former business partner and lover Elizabeth Holmes to get a new trial. This July, Balwani was found guilty of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in selling investors and patients on the company’s malfunctioning blood testing technology.
Holmes, who went to trial first, was convicted of four counts of wire fraud related to investors and acquitted of four counts related to patients. The remaining four counts were dismissed — three because the jury could not reach a verdict and one because the prosecution failed to make various disclosures about its evidence.
Holmes and Balwani were charged in 2018. According to the indictment unsealed on June 15, 2018, the pair had engaged in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients, and both schemes entailed promotion.
Holmes had founded Theranos in 2003 as a 19-year-old college dropout and was hailed and celebrated as a Silicon Valley whiz-kid. The company was aiming to revolutionize medical laboratory testing through allegedly innovative methods for drawing blood, testing blood, and interpreting the resulting patient data to improve outcomes and lower healthcare costs.
Last month, Holmes appealed for a new trial twice. First, because former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, a key witness, had “shown up disheveled” at her home last month, “apparently remorseful over his testimony against her.”
Earlier this week, Holmes got a reprieve from “an expected prison sentence, with the judge in her case delaying her sentencing for up to three months,” as reported by Mercury News. Last month, she appealed for a new trial twice. First, because former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, a key witness, had “shown up disheveled” at her home last month, “apparently remorseful over his testimony against her,” according to a Mercury News report.
She also claimed to be at a disadvantage for being tried before Balwani. In a motion filed in a federal court in San Jose, California, her lawyers argued that “changing the trial order would’ve ‘fundamentally changed’ the evidence jurors learned about Balwani’s role in the alleged misrepresentations to investors. It would probably have resulted in an acquittal on the counts of conviction,” Bloomberg News reported.
Arguing about Rosendorff, her legal team argued that his “statements indicated that federal prosecutors may have engaged in misconduct” with regard to him, the Mercury News report said. Additionally, they demanded that “Judge Edward Davila either throw out the jury’s verdict or schedule a hearing to address the matter,” the report added.
According to Holmes’ partner Billy Evans, the father of their one-year-old son, Rosendorff said he felt “guilty,” and “like he had done something wrong.” He added that the former lab director “purportedly told him that while on the witness stand in Holmes’ trial, “he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad,” and that the prosecution “made things sound worse than they were.”
The prosecution however claimed that Holmes was trying to use Rosendorff’s visit as a “ticket to a new trial,” the Mercury News report said.
Davila set Oct. 17 as the hearing date to bring Rosendorff before the court and added that he did not expect the hearing to last all day. The judge gave both sides several options for a new sentencing date, “should sentencing be needed,” the Mercury News report added.
Bloomberg notes that if Davila agrees to Balwani’s demand, the ex-lovers and ex-partners “could both appear at an Oct. 17 hearing in a common quest to challenge the credibility of Rosendorff, whose testimony was damning for both of them.”
Balwani is currently scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 15 but has asked that “his sentencing be moved to a date sometime after Holmes receives her sentence,” as reported by Mercury News.