In seven days on the witness stand,Holmes alternated between deflecting blame,failing to remember certain events and accepting responsibility for mistakes,even while insisting she didn’t intend to deceive anyone.

The most jolting moments in the courtroom were when Holmes testified she was raped as a student at Stanford University and suffered years of verbal and sexual abuse from her former boyfriend,former Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

By Holmes’s account,the abuse lasted throughout the decade-long relationship with Balwani and had a profound if incalculable influence on her life. Her legal team’s decision not to call a psychiatrist with an expertise in relationship trauma as a witness left it up to jurors how to factor the testimony into their decision.

A prosecutor told the jury in closing arguments that the alleged abuse isn’t relevant to the fraud Holmes was charged with.

Whether jurors find Holmes guilty or not guilty,Assistant US Attorney Jeff Schenk said,“you are not saying we do not believe Ms. Holmes” about the abuse. “You do not need to decide whether that abuse happened.”

Holmes’s defence team tried to convince the jury that she made a sincere effort over 15 years to steer Theranos to success and shouldn’t be punished for failing to achieve her dream.

“Elizabeth Holmes was building a business and not a criminal enterprise,” attorney Kevin Downey told jurors.

Holmes rose to prominence with her promise of a revolution in health care,based on her claims the compact Theranos devices could perform hundreds of diagnostic tests faster,more accurately and cheaper than traditional,bigger machines.

A big selling point was that Theranos analysers could arrive at the results with just a pinprick instead of vials of drawn blood. Holmes cited her own fear of needles as inspiration for the invention,part of the narrative investors and the public heard over years in her promotion of the technology.

By 2015 Holmes was dubbed by Forbes as the youngest female self-made billionaire and was gracing the covers of magazines. But that same year,theWall Street Journal published stories pointing to flaws in Theranos technology,which led regulators the following year to conclude the machines posed a danger to patient health.

The revelations triggered civil lawsuits,including one Holmes settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission,and the Justice Department’s investigation and prosecution. Holmes,Balwani and Walgreens all still face claims over inaccurate blood tests by customers of the drug store chain in an Arizona lawsuit.

Balwani,who faces a separate trial in February on the same fraud charges as Holmes,has pleaded not guilty and has denied her abuse allegations.

Bloomberg