Shorter Sentence
For Holmes, who had a baby in July with her partner Billy Evans, the son of wealthy California hoteliers, incarceration may be far shorter than the maximum penalty allowed, said Robert Weisberg, a criminal justice professor at Stanford Law School.
Because Holmes has no criminal record, it would be a surprise if she got more than three years, Weisberg said. And some of her sentence could be converted into probation or home confinement, leaving her with as little as two years in the federal lockup, he said. Wire-fraud convictions, on average, are around two years, he said.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who oversaw the three-month trial of the Theranos founder, has a lot of flexibility in sentencing. He can consider that Holmes is a new mother and how remorseful she is for the crime, Weisberg said.
In prison, the accommodations for the former billionaire will be simple and communal. Coulman said she was housed in one of many cubicles formed by tall cinder blocks along long rows of concrete walls. Each cubicle has a bunk bed for two inmates, who each get a chair and locker, Coulman said.
Holmes is no stranger to a disciplined life, according to documents presented at her trial. Her handwritten notes from 2005 to 2009 described a daily routine of waking at 4 a.m., meditating, and then eating whey and a banana for breakfast.
‘Second Act’
That suggests she’ll likely be a model prisoner, and probably will “start figuring out fairly soon what her second or third act could be,” Weisberg said. “She will experience incarceration methodically, just as she experiences everything.”
Once she’s released, Holmes is barred from serving as an official in a public company for a decade under her 2018 settlement of a civil lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused her of misleading investors.
But other convicted executives have managed to build back their lives after prison.
Martha Stewart, the homemaking entrepreneur, resumed marketing her branded products after serving five months in prison for a 2004 conviction for lying to authorities investigating her stock sales. Onetime junk-bond king Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty to securities and tax crimes in 1990, became a philanthropist and runs his own think tank, the Milken Institute. Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling, who was convicted in 2006 of securities fraud and insider trading, was reportedly back in the energy world this past year pushing an energy venture.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.