Bob Lee case: Nima Momeni returns to court for rescheduled preliminary hearing
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco prosecutors began laying out their case Monday morning against the man accused of fatally stabbing CashApp founder Bob Lee.
Nima Momeni allegedly stabbed Lee on the 300 block of Main Street in the city's Rincon Hill neighborhood during an early morning confrontation back on April 4.
Momeni, 38, has been in jail since his arrest April 13. He has pleaded not guilty and faces 26 years to life if convicted.
KPIX reporter Lauren Toms is in the courtroom and said Momeni entered the court room looking confident.
UPDATE: Doctor who performed autopsy testifies about deadly stab wounds at Nima Momeni preliminary hearing
On Monday morning, Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai introduced evidence, including photos of a knife that prosecutors say Momeni used to stab Lee, a trail of blood left by Lee as he staggered for help, and video footage showing the two men leave Momeni's sister's condo building before the stabbing.
Prosecutors entered 14 photos of evidence and called on two officers to testify.
The first witness called, San Francisco police officer Cedric Hope, was one of the first officers to arrive on scene.
Hope rendered aid to Lee and accompanied him to the hospital. He noted that a knife was found in a locked gated Caltrans parking lot on the 400 block of Main.
The second witness called by the prosecution was San Francisco police officer Rosalyn Chezk, who works as a crime scene investigator for the department.
She arrived at 8:50 a.m. and saw a 3 1/2 inch paring knife manufactured by kitchenware company Joseph Joseph that was sealed off by orange construction cones and crime scene tape inside the Caltrans parking lot.
She described the blood trail on the street leading to Portside Apartments where there blood stains were visible on the wall, call box and tile floor.
The defense argued too many questions remain surrounding how that evidence was gathered and processed.
"Usually, in my experience, you do fingerprint analysis," defense attorney Saam Zanganeh told reporters during a mid-day recess. "Because as we know, because of COVID, DNA can be expelled through coughing, sneezing, talking in close proximity. There's a lot of ways DNA can get from one place to the next. Fingerprints are a different story and they were not done on the handle which is the most important relevant portion of who if any was handling that item."
No recording devices were allowed in court as Judge Harry Dorfman presided over the first day of the preliminary hearing that aims to determine whether the case should go to trial.
After weeks of postponements, we got the first glimpse of how Momeni's new team from Florida will build their defense.
"We wonder why there wasn't complete testing, logical steps to provide a complete picture. We do wonder why we don't have that," San Francisco-based defense attorney Tony Brass said.
Throughout Monday's hearing, Momeni's two top lawyers, Zanganeh and Bradford Cohen, poked holes in how four witnesses of the SFPD gathered and processed evidence, including why fingerprints were not taken of the suspected murder weapon.
An expert forensic witness explained the material the knife handle is made of is typically unable to maintain a fingerprint and instead gets wiped off easily or absorbed into the material.
Prosecutors have said the evidence points directly to Momeni, who they claim was upset over Lee's suspected relationship with Momeni's sister.
Text messages later recovered show Khazar Momeni was concerned that her brother might have overreacted to events earlier that evening.
"Prior to me coming on, [prosecutors] indicated they believed my client had malice against Bob Lee for drugging and sexually assaulting his sister and that's not the case. That's not the evidence. That's not the evidence the government provided in their interviews," Zangeneh said.
Prosecutors have provided no motive and released little information in a case that has drawn outsized media attention, partly due to Lee's status in the tech world. In addition to creating Cash App, a mobile payment service, Lee was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin.
In mid-June, the judge presiding over the high-profile case pushed back Momeni's preliminary hearing.
The last time the defendant was in court was over a month ago during his first appearance with a new defense team after Momeni and defense attorney Paula Canny parted ways.
Momeni tapped a Florida-based legal team led by Zanganeh, who has a history of representing high-profile cases.
Also Read:
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- Worried text from suspect Nima Momeni's sister discovered on slain tech exec Bob Lee's phone
- Tech exec Nima Momeni formally charged with murder in slaying of Cash App founder Bob Lee
- Suspect in San Francisco slaying of Cash App founder Bob Lee arrested, identified as Emeryville tech entrepreneur
- Deadly stabbing of Bob Lee raises anxiety of returning office workers in San Francisco's Rincon Hill
- Update: Cash App founder, MobileCoin CPO Bob Lee stabbed to death in San Francisco's Rincon Hill neighborhood
Neither lawyer on the new legal team is licensed to practice in California, a procedural matter that further postponed the initial preliminary hearing.
The team used the time to build their case from scratch.
"Whatever happened in the past is in the past. We are fresh eyes, fresh perspectives," attorney Zanganeh said last month. "We're in the infancy portion of doing our due diligence."
The hearing will continue Tuesday morning, where it's expected the defense will call their own set of witnesses.
Lauren Toms contributed to this story.
