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On Tuesday, a federal prosecutor asked the judge dealing with the fraud trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to release court records on mental health defenses.
A federal prosecutor urged the judge dealing with the criminal fraud case of Elizabeth Holmes to disclose the sealed court records about the Theranos Inc. founder preparing a mental health defense as he prepares for trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Volka said on Tuesday that the government supports media requests to disclose documents, stating that if Holmes’ lawyers intend to present a moral defense to jurors within a few weeks, prosecutors need to be prepared to respond.
“As we move towards the trial, the government is not sure what it can say,” Volka said. “At some point, sealing at this level becomes impractical.”
Volka spoke at a hearing in San Jose, California, when U.S. District Judge Edward Davila weighed the requirements of the Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones to initiate the prosecutor’s psychological evaluation of Holmes. In court proceedings, the defendant’s health records are usually kept confidential.
Davila said that he was pleased to have the opportunity to “appropriately review what should be opened and what should be kept sealed.” The judge said that he sympathized with the public’s right to certain information, and he had begun to sort out the content that could be unblocked by himself. .
He ordered Holmes’ lawyer and co-defendant, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former president of Theranos, to do the same by the end of this week in order to be heard at the August 16 hearing. have a discussion.
John Klein, Holmes’ lawyer, told the judge that “a large part” of the sealed record can be made public, “but not all of it in any case.” Klein asked the judge to let him determine which documents could be opened before September 7, that is, one week after the trial began.
“This is a long and difficult process, and I want to do it well,” Klein said. “I wish there was an army behind me, but I didn’t.” Davila rejected the proposed date and told Klein that it needed to be done faster.
Davila authorized prosecutors to evaluate Holmes last year because she said she might want trauma experts to testify on “mental illness or deficiency.” Legal experts who have read between the lines said that Holmes may be testing a legal argument that she was traumatized by a relationship.
Dow Jones speculated that prosecutors tried to prevent defense experts from testifying in the Holmes trial scheduled to begin at the end of this month. The company argued in a court document that although Davila may have determined whether the expert can testify, the details of the dispute and his ruling are still inappropriately concealed from the public, violating the right to freedom of speech.
“These judicial documents are subject to the presumptive public access rights of the First Amendment,” Dow Jones’ attorney Steven D. Zansberg said in the documents.
The company’s request went further, thinking that the document describing the psychological condition of Holmes in the case as a defense against her fraud accusation should also be opened.
The document stated that there was no reason to “keep confidential any part of the document describing or discussing the mental or psychological condition claimed by the defendant as a so-called’privilege’.”
Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou (John Carreyrou) disclosed a series of stories about Theranos, which triggered regulatory and media scrutiny, which eventually led to the dissolution of the company.
Holmes and Balwani face charges of lying to doctors, patients, and investors about the accuracy and capabilities of Theranos blood testing machine. Neither pleaded guilty.
The case is United States v. Holmes, 18-cr-00258, District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose).
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