In the week ahead of former Theranos COO Sunny Balwani’s fraud trial, which was set to begin today before being postponed due to a juror being exposed to someone with COVID, the Santa Clara County Superior Court was hard at work screening potential jurors from the pool of local citizens.
This is a typical part of court cases meant to ensure that a jury’s makeup is representative of the larger community. But the process is a bit trickier with high-profile cases like those of Balwani and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, given the potential for jurors’ opinions to be influenced by information from outside of the trial; things like, say, a flashy 8-episode streaming miniseries based on a podcast by the same name.
While the amount of...