Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, ex-lover seek to overturn fraud convictions

Elizabeth Holmes' lawyer, Amy Saharia, provided several reasons for seeking to overturn Holmes' conviction:

1. Saharia argued that the trial judge improperly allowed former Theranos employee Kingshuk Das to testify as a scientific expert about Theranos's product without making him face cross-examination about his qualifications.
2. She also said that the judge should have allowed Holmes to introduce more evidence attacking another key prosecution witness, Theranos's former laboratory director Adam Rosendorff. This includes details of a government investigation of his work after leaving Theranos that she said called his competence into question.
3. Saharia claimed that the mistakes made during the trial could have made the difference in the "close" case, in which jurors were not able to reach a verdict on most counts against Holmes after seven days of deliberations.

The judges of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals had skeptical questions for both sides and did not clearly indicate how they would rule. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson mentioned that there was "pretty overwhelming evidence" against Holmes, even without the disputed testimony. Circuit Judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Mary Schroeder pointed out that much of Das' testimony concerned his observations at the company, rather than his scientific opinions, as Holmes' lawyer argued. However, Nguyen and Nelson also expressed concerns about the opinions Das was allowed to give during the trial.

Regarding Balwani's case, the judges appeared more skeptical of his lawyer's argument that prosecutors had gone beyond what was in the indictment against him. While the judges did not clearly signal how they would rule, their questioning suggested that they were considering the arguments presented by both sides carefully.