Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leaves after a hearing at a federal court in San Jose, Calif., on July 17, 2019. [Image courtesy of Reuters/Stephen Lam]
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is considering making a “mental disease” defense in her closely watched federal fraud trial in San Jose, Calif.
A court order filed yesterday revealed the defense strategy. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila granted prosecutors’ request over Holmes’ objections to have a team of two psychological experts examine Holmes over two days of videotaped sessions in order to evaluate her claims.
Holmes, according to Davila, previously notified the court about the possibility of clinical psychologist Mindy Mechanic testifying about an examination consisting of psychological testing and “structured and semi-structured interviews.”
The court order redacts mentions of what type of mental disease Mechanic may end up testifying about when it comes to Holmes.
Mechanic “frequently provides expert testimony in complex legal cases involving interpersonal violence,” according to her faculty bio on the website of the Health Promotion Research Institute at California State University at Fullerton.
In another court order filed yesterday, Davila granted most of Holmes’ requests for her lawyers to gain access to grand jury selection records. Holmes through her lawyers has been raising questions about the grand jury that returned second and third superseding indictments against her, asking whether the pandemic prevented jury selection from a fair cross-section of the community.
Jury selection for the trial is scheduled for March 9, 2021 — with opening arguments commencing around March 16.
Holmes and Theranos were once Silicon Valley darlings, with Holmes claiming that her company was set to revolutionize blood testing with technology that could analyze tiny amounts of blood. Forbes in 2015 even recognized Holmes as America’s richest self-made woman based on Theranos’ multibillion-dollar valuation at the time.
Investigative reporting, though, soon dismantled the claims Holmes was making about Theranos’ technology, raising questions about whether she and others had misled investors. The downward spiral culminated in the 2018 shutdown of the company, with the SEC criminally charging Holmes and former Theranos president Sunny Balwani over what it described as a “massive fraud.”