7 ms·

How has Elizabeth still not had her trial?!It keeps getting pushed back.. and more surprising, she got married in 2019 while awaiting trial?! Does that expose

How has Elizabeth still not had her trial?!It keeps getting pushed back.. and more surprising, she got married in 2019 while awaiting trial?! Does that expose her new husband to financial liability from the fraud lawsuit?

f430 6y ago
The law is made for the rest of us. It doesn't apply to these folks. Not when your daddy knows Kissinger and other big shots.
- permo-w 6y ago
  Kissinger is 97. I was shocked he’s even still alive
colejohnson66 6y ago
It doesn’t have to do with her wealth (although that does give her better lawyers). The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. And getting married while awaiting trial is allowed because the accused hasn’t been convicted (hence, accused). (see edit below) What would be unusual is for the charges to be reduced or even dropped. But, as it stands, she’s facing 20 years in prison. Possibly more after this incident. EDIT: I wasn’t saying she wouldn’t be allowed to get married post-conviction. I was saying that, even if the right to marriage was removed when convicted, she’s still not convicted.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > And getting married while awaiting trial is allowed because the accused hasn’t been convicted (hence, accused). That's wrong; getting married while awaiting trial is allowed in the same way that getting married before being charged is allowed, and getting married after being convicted is allowed. The surprising thing is not that she was "allowed" to get married. Everyone is. The surprising thing is that someone was willing to marry her.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    (see my edit about my wording re: getting married) > The surprising thing is not that she was "allowed" to get married. Everyone is. The surprising thing is that someone was willing to marry her. People marry serial killers more often that one would want to believe. Just do a search for “serial killers married in prison” and you’ll see “top-10” clickbait lists on almost every result. Some people are just crazy and idolize convicts. Someone marrying Holmes is nothing novel. Maybe they were attracted to her psychopathic personality? That happens sometimes.
    - petra 6y ago
      Is she really psychopathic ? Many CEO's and entrepreneurs don't care about ethics. There's something about that career that does that to people. But that's quite different than being a psychopath like a serial killer is.
      - vmception 6y ago
        > There's something about that career that does that to people. (Something about the people that the career enables and only sometimes makes visible)
        dmix 6y ago
        Indeed, this is a great example of a fallacy like survivors bias, where you only hear about a tiny percentage of cases because of x, which makes for a poor representation of the entire population. The vast majority of our interaction with CEO behaviour is via true crime stories and exceptional rare cases. I see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as rare cases of an executives playing a huge role in their companies but I could list off countless billion dollar company CEOs people have ever heard of, let alone 99%+ companies are small/medium sized, many companies aren’t even public, countless play a much smaller and far more boring role, etc etc.
        modo_mario 6y ago
- Blahah 6y ago
  I don't understand why getting married while awaiting trial is weird, nor why it makes a difference whether you've been convicted. You can get married before or after being convicted, in prison or otherwise. Criminal convictions don't affect your ability to get married.
  - josefx 6y ago
    It might open up ways for her to hide away some of her ill-gotten gains. Ideally the state keeps track of it and nails her with additional punishment if she is caught trying that.
- conistonwater 6y ago
  > The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. I think this is one of the things I learned from Ken White on All the President's Lawyers: we read about legal system abuse here and there and it shocks us, but even the most common normal things in the criminal justice system like how long criminal trials take can be just as shocking if only you know about them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. Yeah, and some like Assange spend their time in prison BEFORE their trial.
  - oldgradstudent 6y ago
    Had she tried to avoid hearings by taking refuge in the Equadorian embassy for nearly a decade, she too would have been in pretrial detention.
  - dazc 6y ago
    This common in the UK for 'anyone' accused of a serious offence.
    - permo-w 6y ago
      Yeah I’m always ready to pack up and head to the Ecuadorean Embassy
  - vkou 6y ago
    You don't have to be Assange to spend some pre-trial time in prison, if you choose to skip on your court dates.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. They moved pretty quick on Martin Shkreli.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    It depends on how fast they can build a case and how good the defence is. He just happened to have a lot of damning evidence against him and a pretty shit defence team, coupled with a shit PR problem in all media outlets, which made his case a toss-in.
  - ABeeSea 6y ago
    He was arrested in December 2015 and his trial started in June 2017. After appeals, he wasn’t sentenced until March 2018. Not exactly a speedy process.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  > The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. You can demand it goes faster. In the US this is specifically the "speedy trial" provision of the Sixth Amendment. The government is obliged to provide "speedy trial" if demanded - if it can't do that it isn't entitled to a trial at all. However, your lawyers (and she can afford good ones) will almost invariably advise you not to do that unless things have gotten entirely out of hand - because speedy trial applies to both sides, and the prosecution will have the rough outline of their case before they even file charges, so unless you're in a hurry t go to prison...
- runako 6y ago
  > Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. Slight hijack, but this is a key reason behind the movement to abolish cash bail. The thrust of the argument is essentially that people with more financial resources can pay bail. Those without those resources cannot, so the pre-trial period is often a de facto prison sentence whose length is unknown in advance. This setup obviously results in a tiered justice system. There are ~500k people in jail who are innocent under the law. The elimination of cash bail is intended to eliminate this disparity.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    The problem is that if you remove it, what do you replace it with? A judge making the decision if you’re released or jailed awaiting trial. For me, that’s fine, but for some people, that’s not (despite the judge in the current situation setting the bail amount). <rant> You end up with things like California’s SB-10 (thankfully overturned by Prop 25[0]) that would’ve replaced it by a risk assessment “AI” black box.[a] [a]: SB-10 would supposedly have required “tools [that] shall be demonstrated by scientific research to be accurate and reliable”. But what science? Crime statistics says black people commit more crimes, but some claims that those numbers are the result of overpolicing. Who’s right? [0]: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_Cash_Bail_with_Risk_Assessments_Referendum_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_C...
    - runako 6y ago
      I'm an engineer so this is not an area where I am an expert. But recognizing that we have a system that is openly biased against people without financial resources seems like something we should change. I understand that DC rarely uses cash bail and has a 40+ year track record showing that 90% of accused show for their trial dates and > 90% are not re-arrested before trial. So maybe since that system seems to work for the most part, we could use that as a basis? Or at least require a very strong burden of proof before we presume people guilty because they are not wealthy? How much better is the cash bail system at producing defendants at trial than DC's system? Is it so much better that it's worth ignoring our Constitution? If nothing else, we spend ~$17B incarcerating innocent (again, per our law) people. Seems like an incredible waste of money and human potential. Maybe we try something else.
wombatpm 6y ago
Still the possibility of a pardon.
ABeeSea 6y ago
The wheels of justice move slow. The timelines of their cases aren’t that different and Holmes’s case is both clear-cut and amazingly complex. Aaron was arrested in Jan 2011 and died Jan 2013 before his trial started and after being offered a plea deal of 6 month in low security. His trial never started and I can’t find if it was ever scheduled when I do a google search. Holmes was arrested in June 2018 and her trial was originally scheduled for March 2021 but delayed until July. Her pre-trial hearings start in two weeks.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Complex trials take a long time, and prosecutors often use pretrial detention as a tool to coerce defendants to waive their right to a speedy trial.
- oldgradstudent 6y ago
  Not in this case, though. Or am I missing anything?
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  > Complex trials take a long time Especially when you're dealing with the defendants purposely scuttling evidence of a highly technical nature. The court will not treat this lightly.
rtkwe 6y ago
Corporate trials always take a long time because of the a) the amount of evidence created at a corporation of any reasonable size is huge, b) rich people can afford good lawyers who can gum up any process and c) the laws are written such that the person actually knew/participated in whatever crime they're being charged with. (A) and then (C) is where a lot of time can be wasted and if the executive was being crafty about 'not knowing' and only getting the good news officially it can be tricky to prove they actually knew they were lying.
Shivetya 6y ago
I read awhile back that there was the equivalent of sixteen million pages of evidence. There have of course been the attempts to throw it all out and Holmes has tried to play the victim; she may actually believe she is; in hopes it all lands on her business partner which leads us to her getting married. part to maintain her lifestyle she was used to during Theranos's time at the top and part to make her more appealing to any jury and doubly so if she can get on stand pregnant. her court appearances that have pictures usually show her without makeup and fancy clothing. So the question then is, sociopath or Psychopath? Probably the former from the assumption of the victimhood
surfingdino 6y ago
It is a high-profile case. Careers will be made and destroyed on the back of it. The legal team want to get their ducks in a row, because it involves government agencies and wealthy investors who will be asked a lot of inconvenient questions about their role (like "why didn't you act sooner?", "why did you invest in that company?") I think it's a mix of prudence, an overloaded justice system, and the pandemic that slow this down.
Netcob 6y ago
You can't sue a husband and wife for the same crime!
BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
If you get married, give your spouse lots of gifts, and then get divorced, can the state take the gifts away from the spouse?
spamizbad 6y ago
Given her station in society she is granted a measure of elite impunity... but it's not absolute. She likely won't face that harsh of a penalty when she finally goes to trial. If she got too harsh a sentence it would reflect poorly on those who supported her.

f430 6y ago

The law is made for the rest of us. It doesn't apply to these folks. Not when your daddy knows Kissinger and other big shots.

permo-w 6y ago
Kissinger is 97. I was shocked he’s even still alive

colejohnson66 6y ago

It doesn’t have to do with her wealth (although that does give her better lawyers). The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. And getting married while awaiting trial is allowed because the accused hasn’t been convicted (hence, accused). (see edit below) What would be unusual is for the charges to be reduced or even dropped. But, as it stands, she’s facing 20 years in prison. Possibly more after this incident. EDIT: I wasn’t saying she wouldn’t be allowed to get married post-conviction. I was saying that, even if the right to marriage was removed when convicted, she’s still not convicted.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> And getting married while awaiting trial is allowed because the accused hasn’t been convicted (hence, accused). That's wrong; getting married while awaiting trial is allowed in the same way that getting married before being charged is allowed, and getting married after being convicted is allowed. The surprising thing is not that she was "allowed" to get married. Everyone is. The surprising thing is that someone was willing to marry her.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  (see my edit about my wording re: getting married) > The surprising thing is not that she was "allowed" to get married. Everyone is. The surprising thing is that someone was willing to marry her. People marry serial killers more often that one would want to believe. Just do a search for “serial killers married in prison” and you’ll see “top-10” clickbait lists on almost every result. Some people are just crazy and idolize convicts. Someone marrying Holmes is nothing novel. Maybe they were attracted to her psychopathic personality? That happens sometimes.
  - petra 6y ago
    Is she really psychopathic ? Many CEO's and entrepreneurs don't care about ethics. There's something about that career that does that to people. But that's quite different than being a psychopath like a serial killer is.
    - vmception 6y ago
      > There's something about that career that does that to people. (Something about the people that the career enables and only sometimes makes visible)
      - dmix 6y ago
        Indeed, this is a great example of a fallacy like survivors bias, where you only hear about a tiny percentage of cases because of x, which makes for a poor representation of the entire population. The vast majority of our interaction with CEO behaviour is via true crime stories and exceptional rare cases. I see Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as rare cases of an executives playing a huge role in their companies but I could list off countless billion dollar company CEOs people have ever heard of, let alone 99%+ companies are small/medium sized, many companies aren’t even public, countless play a much smaller and far more boring role, etc etc.
        modo_mario 6y ago
Blahah 6y ago
I don't understand why getting married while awaiting trial is weird, nor why it makes a difference whether you've been convicted. You can get married before or after being convicted, in prison or otherwise. Criminal convictions don't affect your ability to get married.
- josefx 6y ago
  It might open up ways for her to hide away some of her ill-gotten gains. Ideally the state keeps track of it and nails her with additional punishment if she is caught trying that.
conistonwater 6y ago
> The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. I think this is one of the things I learned from Ken White on All the President's Lawyers: we read about legal system abuse here and there and it shocks us, but even the most common normal things in the criminal justice system like how long criminal trials take can be just as shocking if only you know about them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ekianjo 6y ago
> Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. Yeah, and some like Assange spend their time in prison BEFORE their trial.
- oldgradstudent 6y ago
  Had she tried to avoid hearings by taking refuge in the Equadorian embassy for nearly a decade, she too would have been in pretrial detention.
- dazc 6y ago
  This common in the UK for 'anyone' accused of a serious offence.
  - permo-w 6y ago
    Yeah I’m always ready to pack up and head to the Ecuadorean Embassy
- vkou 6y ago
  You don't have to be Assange to spend some pre-trial time in prison, if you choose to skip on your court dates.
goatinaboat 6y ago
The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. They moved pretty quick on Martin Shkreli.
- fakedang 6y ago
  It depends on how fast they can build a case and how good the defence is. He just happened to have a lot of damning evidence against him and a pretty shit defence team, coupled with a shit PR problem in all media outlets, which made his case a toss-in.
- ABeeSea 6y ago
  He was arrested in December 2015 and his trial started in June 2017. After appeals, he wasn’t sentenced until March 2018. Not exactly a speedy process.
tialaramex 6y ago
> The justice system just moves slowly. Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. This is nothing unusual. You can demand it goes faster. In the US this is specifically the "speedy trial" provision of the Sixth Amendment. The government is obliged to provide "speedy trial" if demanded - if it can't do that it isn't entitled to a trial at all. However, your lawyers (and she can afford good ones) will almost invariably advise you not to do that unless things have gotten entirely out of hand - because speedy trial applies to both sides, and the prosecution will have the rough outline of their case before they even file charges, so unless you're in a hurry t go to prison...
runako 6y ago
> Many people spend upwards of years before going to trial. Slight hijack, but this is a key reason behind the movement to abolish cash bail. The thrust of the argument is essentially that people with more financial resources can pay bail. Those without those resources cannot, so the pre-trial period is often a de facto prison sentence whose length is unknown in advance. This setup obviously results in a tiered justice system. There are ~500k people in jail who are innocent under the law. The elimination of cash bail is intended to eliminate this disparity.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  The problem is that if you remove it, what do you replace it with? A judge making the decision if you’re released or jailed awaiting trial. For me, that’s fine, but for some people, that’s not (despite the judge in the current situation setting the bail amount). <rant> You end up with things like California’s SB-10 (thankfully overturned by Prop 25[0]) that would’ve replaced it by a risk assessment “AI” black box.[a] [a]: SB-10 would supposedly have required “tools [that] shall be demonstrated by scientific research to be accurate and reliable”. But what science? Crime statistics says black people commit more crimes, but some claims that those numbers are the result of overpolicing. Who’s right? [0]: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_Cash_Bail_with_Risk_Assessments_Referendum_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_25,_Replace_C...
  - runako 6y ago
    I'm an engineer so this is not an area where I am an expert. But recognizing that we have a system that is openly biased against people without financial resources seems like something we should change. I understand that DC rarely uses cash bail and has a 40+ year track record showing that 90% of accused show for their trial dates and > 90% are not re-arrested before trial. So maybe since that system seems to work for the most part, we could use that as a basis? Or at least require a very strong burden of proof before we presume people guilty because they are not wealthy? How much better is the cash bail system at producing defendants at trial than DC's system? Is it so much better that it's worth ignoring our Constitution? If nothing else, we spend ~$17B incarcerating innocent (again, per our law) people. Seems like an incredible waste of money and human potential. Maybe we try something else.

wombatpm 6y ago

Still the possibility of a pardon.

ABeeSea 6y ago

The wheels of justice move slow. The timelines of their cases aren’t that different and Holmes’s case is both clear-cut and amazingly complex. Aaron was arrested in Jan 2011 and died Jan 2013 before his trial started and after being offered a plea deal of 6 month in low security. His trial never started and I can’t find if it was ever scheduled when I do a google search. Holmes was arrested in June 2018 and her trial was originally scheduled for March 2021 but delayed until July. Her pre-trial hearings start in two weeks.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Complex trials take a long time, and prosecutors often use pretrial detention as a tool to coerce defendants to waive their right to a speedy trial.

oldgradstudent 6y ago
Not in this case, though. Or am I missing anything?
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
> Complex trials take a long time Especially when you're dealing with the defendants purposely scuttling evidence of a highly technical nature. The court will not treat this lightly.

rtkwe 6y ago

Corporate trials always take a long time because of the a) the amount of evidence created at a corporation of any reasonable size is huge, b) rich people can afford good lawyers who can gum up any process and c) the laws are written such that the person actually knew/participated in whatever crime they're being charged with. (A) and then (C) is where a lot of time can be wasted and if the executive was being crafty about 'not knowing' and only getting the good news officially it can be tricky to prove they actually knew they were lying.

Shivetya 6y ago

I read awhile back that there was the equivalent of sixteen million pages of evidence. There have of course been the attempts to throw it all out and Holmes has tried to play the victim; she may actually believe she is; in hopes it all lands on her business partner which leads us to her getting married. part to maintain her lifestyle she was used to during Theranos's time at the top and part to make her more appealing to any jury and doubly so if she can get on stand pregnant. her court appearances that have pictures usually show her without makeup and fancy clothing. So the question then is, sociopath or Psychopath? Probably the former from the assumption of the victimhood

surfingdino 6y ago

It is a high-profile case. Careers will be made and destroyed on the back of it. The legal team want to get their ducks in a row, because it involves government agencies and wealthy investors who will be asked a lot of inconvenient questions about their role (like "why didn't you act sooner?", "why did you invest in that company?") I think it's a mix of prudence, an overloaded justice system, and the pandemic that slow this down.

Netcob 6y ago

You can't sue a husband and wife for the same crime!

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago

If you get married, give your spouse lots of gifts, and then get divorced, can the state take the gifts away from the spouse?

spamizbad 6y ago

Given her station in society she is granted a measure of elite impunity... but it's not absolute. She likely won't face that harsh of a penalty when she finally goes to trial. If she got too harsh a sentence it would reflect poorly on those who supported her.