Interesting part: As the trial was starting, Homes decided to be become pregnant! She gave birth to first baby and now she is immediately onto 2nd one as judge decides sentencing!! Given Pregnancies are all pre-planned, she is either using pregnancy to change outcome or just done with kids before she goes to jail. Either way, it would be super hard for judge to put Homes in jail when two infants needs their mother. This is either a brilliant move or a very cruel one.
If that's true and she's provided services to rape survivors that needs to be looked into.
Individuals who've been through such an experience deserve to be taken seriously. They should not be the plaything of someone known for psychological manipulation and driving people to suicide.
I’ve read a few of these and they seem to be genuinely heartfelt, expressing that she is a good person, already suffered enough, etc. What’s not covered is the lie she perpetuated, was that all a misunderstanding? Just a case of overzealous hyping as opposed to conscious fraud? That’s very hard to believe.
I think it depends how much of a danger they are to society. Is Elizabeth Holmes likely to defraud or otherwise hurt people if she's not put in prison for X years?
People on HN, Twitter, and every opinion column in the US are quick to advocate prison reform, but as soon as it comes to a character or subgroup they don't like, it's lock 'em up and throw away the key.
I get it. Elizabeth Holmes was a rich asshole (who is guilty mainly of defrauding other rich assholes). But let's not let our incarceration policy be guided solely by our preconceptions, which are often heavily biased, influenced, and even misinformed. Punitive deconstructive punishment is corrosive to society.
Fair point, but there are also a lot of people, me included, who don't care too much about the fact that she's not a danger to society and instead want to see a punishment that would deter future corporate executives from thinking about doing anything remotely similar in the future.
My desire for prison reform has nothing to do with sentencing. For the most part, prison reform has to do with conditions inside of a prison, for example cleanliness and the humane treatment of prisoners.
So I think (and this is I admit largely based on my opinion, I don't have good data for or against) that punishment is less of a deterrent so much as _how much there is to lose_ from the punishment... Note I don't mean (just) financial loss, but also how much the punishment will damage ones standard of living.
For example, someone who was living in absolute poverty might get involved with a gang both for physical protection and to be able to live even somewhat comfortably by being involved in the drug trade; and from there may get involved in some amount of violent crime in order to maintain that life... Now the gain for me here is relatively speaking pretty high (get a much higher standard of living) and if they do go to prison, well, as shitty as prison is I already would be living a pretty shitty life outside of it (be barely or unable to pay bills, would live in an area with a decent amount of violent crime so being scared of violence in prison is comparatively less of a big deal, etc)
Contrast this to "person from rich background commits fraud to become richer". If the penalty is "they lose their ill gotten gains and have to live in their comfortable home for 18 months" that... isn't risking very much either, so that isn't a strong disincentive. However if the penalty is serious prison time, the kind of fines that would absolutely ruin them, etc. then doing crime again carries significant risk
My theory as to why punishment isn't a disincentive is largely that for serious crimes the risk of it happening isn't high enough, and the punishment isn't extreme enough for it to matter for people in poverty who would be inclined to crime... and because we punish white collar crime so rarely and so lightly the risk and severity of punishment is too low to discourage that as well.
Obviously how this is corrected depends on which you are trying to address. For "low class" crime (drug dealing, etc) we already punish pretty severely as a society, and raising the standard of living for our poorest would probably have more impact (they'd have less to gain and more to lose). For white collar type crimes more severe punishment (so something significant beyond what was gained by the crime is lost) would probably be an affective disincentive.
Again though, this is just my opinion based on my imagining of what would motivate me to commit crime
However if they had fines that ruin them, then wouldn't they be in the position of having nothing to lose and becoming a repeat offender?
The punishment would have to be off-putting without being motivation of offend again. But as we see with business fraud it happens all the time and decades of jail time don't deter.
Yeah that's a valid point. It definitely shouldn't put them in a situation where they need to depend on crime because they have nothing left to lose.
I'm just suggesting that there is a line to walk and for a lot of this white collar crime I think harsher punishments probably would act as a deterrent, as opposed to drug/violence/petty offenses where making them harsher than what we have already isn't likely to deter much
She would still be able to hurt people like her husband and her children - assuming she is manipulating them to help mitigate a criminal sentence. More generally, she could manipulate and scam anyone she is exposed to. Putting her in prison would reduce the risk of that harm.
There is also deterrence to think about. In some sense, we could ban Holmes from being an executive in any company or from handling client funds or something and probably she would never be a problem for society again. But, if other, would be fraudulent CEOs knew that defeat meant a slap on the wrist, they would be encouraged to take risks and bend the rules.
Generally, I am in favor of prison reform - but I think easing the sentences of the rich and powerful is a poor place to start.
> The judge should not view Theranos as "a house of cards," but as the "ambitious, inventive, and indisputably valuable enterprise it was," they wrote. "The court's difficult task is to look beyond those surface-level views when it fashions its sentence."
I’m trying to stay level headed and reason about this. I am a layman when it comes to the US justice system, but I find this insulting and making a mockery of the justice system.
It was absolutely a fraudulent, house of cards. The courts task is to actually carry out justice, and keep in mind the fact that Elizabeth Holmes carefully concatenated an imagine of success, even dressing like Steve Jobs.
Forget the investors. This crime defrauded actual patients. An 18 month sentence? Ha! Why not just abolish the entire judicial branch of government? What’s even the point?
It is somewhat worth pointing out that she was found not guilty of defrauding patients. She was tried on that count but found not guilty and one of the jurors has come out to say that they actually do not think that Holmes had ever defrauded any patients or doctors, only that she had defrauded investors.
This is in stark contrast to Balwani who was recently found guilty of defrauding patients and doctors.
I think this reflects a failure of the justice system. The fact that a jury acquitted her does not mean she is innocent. It means the jury was duped by yet more of her lies.
> "We acknowledge that this may seem a tall order given the public perception of this case," her lawyers said in the filing, urging Davila to see beyond the "media vitriol for Ms. Holmes."
> The judge should not view Theranos as "a house of cards," but as the "ambitious, inventive, and indisputably valuable enterprise it was," they wrote. "The court's difficult task is to look beyond those surface-level views when it fashions its sentence."
She's still taking responsibility for exactly zero.
She needs to go to prison for a long time (at least 10 years) for one simple reason, to act as a deterrent to anyone else who thinks you can create a company and then lie about your products capabilities in order to defraud investors and customers.
It isn't just a case that people lost money in Theranos and that their customer's customer's health may have been adversely impacted, it drives right at the heart of capitalism. Yes, we all know it isn't a level playing field, but when a company is committing fraud then it impacts other companies who may have been actually trying to develop a legitimate blood testing product and undermines the public's confidence in such companies.
