Jury to reconvene to deliberate in Elizabeth Holmes trial

The jury deliberating over the case of Elizabeth Holmes will reconvene on Monday to weigh 11 charges against the Theranos CEO after she was accused of fraud and conspiracy in connection to her now-defunct health technology startup.

Lawyers for the defense and prosecution concluded their closing statements Friday afternoon, sending the trial to the jury after more than three months of testimony. The  jury started deliberating late on Friday and are scheduled to pick up on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

Holmes, 37, is facing two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud for allegedly taking part in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, and an additional ploy to deceive doctors and patients.

The jury is composed of eight men and four women, according to the AP. If found guilty of all counts against her, Holmes could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who served as president and COO of Theranos and dated Holmes for more than 10 years, was also charged in connection to his purported involvement in the alleged schemes. He is set to go on trial next year.

Holmes and Balwani claimed that their company, Theranos, was able to conduct clinical tests on small amounts of blood. In reality, however, the technology was flawed and at times provided inaccurate results.

Prosecutor Jeff Schenk, during his closing argument on Thursday, said that while Holmes could have recognized the defects in Theranos’s technology, she instead “chose fraud over business failure.”

“She chose to be dishonest. This choice was not only callous; it was criminal, Schenk added, according to the AP.

The defense, however, worked to depict Holmes as an entrepreneur who wanted to improve health care.

“Elizabeth Holmes was building a business and not a criminal enterprise,” Holmes’s lawyer Kevin Downey said, according to the AP.

Holmes, during her time on the stand, accused Balwani of emotional and physical abuse, arguing that he was critical of her, controlled what she ate, managed her schedule and barred her from seeing her family because he saw them as a destructive.

She also accused Balwani of raping her, testifying that he “would force me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to because he would say that he wanted me to know he still loved me,” according to The New York Times.