(Bloomberg) — A year and a half after technology executive Bob Lee was murdered on a street in downtown San Francisco, a lawyer for the acquaintance accused of stabbing him has told jurors that Lee was drugged with illegal drugs. He said it was an act of self-defense while he was ingesting a large amount of alcohol.
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After prosecutors promised in opening arguments in Monday’s trial that video footage and DNA evidence would prove Nima Momeni guilty of Lee’s attack, Momeni’s lawyers are flipping the script and trying to frame Lee as the perpetrator. And so.
“Nima had to stand his ground against someone who had barely slept for 90 hours and was using cocaine the entire time,” said Saam Zangeneh.
Before becoming CEO of MobileCoin, Lee was respected in the Bay Area tech community as a master coder who helped develop Google’s Android and Square’s Cash App. The murder of the 43-year-old father of two in April 2023 garnered national attention, with initial speculation that he may have been a random victim of violence in a city descended into post-pandemic lawlessness. Speculation has increased as to whether this is the case.
Police arrested Momeni, an acquaintance of Lee and a fellow technology entrepreneur, after the men got into an argument late at night over Momeni’s sister, Hazar, before leaving her luxury apartment together. The story changed dramatically when he was charged with premeditated murder.
DA election
The case is a high-profile case for San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who served as a prosecutor for seven years before being appointed to the job by Mayor London Breed on a tough-on-crime agenda, following the attorney general’s appointment in 2022. It will be a test. Recall of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin.
But a verdict in the Momeni case is unlikely to be reached before Mr. Jenkins faces voters on Nov. 5 for a four-year term. Her office said the trial could take two months and testimony is scheduled four days a week.
Prosecutors accused Momeni of being overprotective of his sister, but Zangeneh said the text messages between the men were cordial, undermining the notion that there was bad blood. said.
“This motive they’re trying to tell you doesn’t exist, and there are text messages between Bob and Nima to prove it,” he said.
Defense attorneys also offered differing views on the video clips the jury would see.
“Gingerly Flips”
story continues
Assistant District Attorney Omid Tarai said security camera footage of the attack showed Momeni throwing the weapon over a nearby fence to conceal the crime. In contrast, Mr Zangeneh said that after Mr Momeni took the knife from Mr Lee in self-defense, he took the knife and “carefully tipped it over the fence”.
Similarly, what prosecutors described as a reenactment of the murder, police video footage of Momeni pantomiming the stabbing motion outside his lawyer’s office, was also described by Zangeneh as evidence of his innocence. The defense lawyer said the video showed Mr Momeni avoiding Mr Lee’s attacks and not pretending to stab him.
“Someone died. No one likes it, but you have the right to protect yourself,” Zangeneh said. “And that’s what Nima Momeni did.”
Momeni wore a blue suit in court on Monday and appeared to have gained weight during his months in custody. Lee’s ex-wife, who was sitting in the audience, burst into tears as prosecutors described Lee’s 911 call, during which he said “help me” 47 times. A recording of that call was played to the jury before prosecutors called their first witness, a police officer who attended Mr. Lee when he was found unconscious and covered in blood downtown.
It is unclear whether jurors will hear testimony from Mr. Momeni, 40, who runs an IT consulting company and also had a run-in with police over allegations he stabbed several teenagers in 2005, but his sister Mr. Hazard may become a key witness. That’s because she was in a social circle that overlapped with two men, and both men were known for partying.
An autopsy report released by the city medical examiner’s office weeks after Lee’s murder found that Lee had cocaine, ketamine and alcohol in his system when he died.
“Getting naked”
Prosecutors told jurors that the day before the murder, Momeni had picked up her sister from a party at another man’s house, which Lee had also attended, and that Momeni had been “wanting to be a tough guy who wanted answers.” He said the evidence shows that he behaved like a man who was in a situation where he had a confrontation with him. Lee spoke by phone about an incident in which “the girls were naked” in the apartment.
date rape drugs
Momeni’s lawyers argue that Momeni would not have been angry at Lee, but at the man who hosted the party where Hazard allegedly took the date rape drug. She was then seen waking up and crying as she called her husband and Nima for a ride home.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman, who ordered Momeni to stand trial last year, said at the time that he viewed the evidence against the defendant as “very strong.” Another judge is overseeing the jury trial.
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