Jury selection begins in trial of Bob Lee murder suspect Nima Momeni
Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial against Nima Momeni – the man accused of fatally stabbing tech executive Bob Lee in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023.
Eighteen is the magic number the defense and prosecution are trying to reach in a jury: 12 jurors and 6 alternates. All must approach the trial with an impartial perspective.
"It's going to be tough for the defense, not impossible, but it's going to be very tough," Julian Gilbert, a trial behavior consultant, told CBS News Bay Area.
Jury selection is one of Gilbert's specialties. He looks at every factor that could help or hurt each side from a juror's personal experience to how much media coverage they've consumed.
"It's really more of a de-selection process," Gilbert explained. "The two sides are really looking for the jurors that they want to get rid of. They're not trying to select jurors. They're trying to de-select jurors."
It's a counterintuitive balance, Gilbert said, where defense attorneys are looking to disqualify jurors that may be favorable to Bob Lee's experiences.
"Bob Lee may not have been as famous as they're building them up to be, but he was well known, I think, in that that circle," Gilbert says about the likelihood of jurors being selected for their tech experience. "Those people may be a little bit younger. They're going to be the sort of the like I said, the Silicon Valley bros, may be actually people that are good for the prosecution here."
Lee is known for his role in founding Cash App and as a chief product officer of MobileCoin, now Sentz.
"The trial has begun," said the judge at the start of the day. "The right to a jury trial is one of the most important rights given to each of us. To have a case judged by a fair and impartial jury."
The group of potential jurors was comprised of a wide group of San Franciscans — from bar owners and lawyers, to travel and sports enthusiasts.
Prosecutors are looking to eliminate potential jurors that may be favorable to Momeni's story.
"Those who have felt accused, maybe even wrongfully accused, particularly those who have felt wrongfully accused, but those who have felt accused probably are going to be good for the defense," Gilbert explained. "Those who have come from a really close family, those who have had to play the role of like a big brother in the past since I think that is an important aspect in this case."
During jury selection – where cameras were not allowed inside – a prosecutor asked an initial pool of 18 jurors about police bias. The prosecution has named more than 20 SFPD officers as potential witnesses and worked Tuesday to weed out anyone who has had extreme encounters with the law.
Prosecutor Omid Talai told potential jurors, "What I don't want anyone to do is be on either side of the spectrum. I don't want anyone to favor a police officer or to come in with a negative feeling. I just want people who can be fair and impartial."
Several jurors expressed potential bias against police officers but indicated they could leave their issues outside of the courtroom to remain neutral during trial.
"But in the context of this case, I would start in the middle. Where I outside the courtroom, I would not," said one potential juror.
The judge explained the ability to consider facts beyond reasonable doubt is most important for jurors, and Gilbert said prosecutors have an interesting tactic in seeing how potential jurors may do just that.
"[A prosecutor] might hold the pen behind their back, in front of the jurors, and they drop the pen. And nobody sees the pen drop, but they hear it drop. And then he asks the jurors, well, what happened to the pen?" Gilbert explained.
"They're looking for the people who will say, 'Well, I don't really know, because I didn't see the pen drop. I need to see it drop for me to know that the pen drop. I heard it dropped. Maybe it dropped, but I don't know. I have a doubt because I didn't see it.' Those people have unusually high standards. Their threshold for the burden of proof is high, and so prosecutors want to identify those folks," he said.
Speaking to reporters ahead of jury selection, defense attorney Saam Zangeneh said jury selection is one of the most important parts of the case.
"These are the people that make a determination of innocence or guilt," he said. "You know, we want people that are going to be able to be fair and impartial, that are going to listen to the evidence and, you know, follow the rules. That's all you can ask for, right?"
During jury selection Tuesday, Zangeneh focused on one of their main defense strategies: self-defense.
Most jurors said they felt a person has a right to defend themselves from an attack, and about half said they felt uneasy about California's stand your ground law that allows people to defend themselves without retreating if they believe they are in imminent danger.
Zangeneh then turned to drug use — another key theme of the case.
A handful of potential jurors explained they had experience with substance abuse and some said they could tell when someone is under the influence of drugs.
Both the defense and prosecution can each eliminate 10 potential jurors without any reason.
Gilbert says this is all part of the strategy.
"There's a saying in jury selection, those who talk walk, and those with nothing to say stay," he explained. "It tends to be those who don't talk up as much, who don't express their opinions and potential biases that make up the jury and the ones who speak up and express their views, they tend to get excused for either for cause or for peremptories. And so you're often left with the jurors in the middle."
But for both the defense and the prosecution, jury selection is one of the toughest parts of the job.
"That can be a heavy burden to try to, you know, find people that are going to be fair in this case," said Gilbert.
"I would feel a sort of weight of that responsibility, you know, if I was on the defense side, and similarly, for the prosecution too, you know you also feel very responsible, because, you know, clearly they believe that this person did commit this crime or they wouldn't have brought charges against him. And so, you know, they also have a really heavy duty and responsibility."