Juror questions in Bob Lee murder trial focus on deadly confrontation
The high-profile Bob Lee murder trial stretched into its sixth week in a San Francisco courtroom Monday, with jurors getting a chance to pose questions to the defendant accused of fatally stabbing the Cash App founder last year.
Tech consultant Nima Momeni wrapped up his third day of testimony as he tried to convince the jury he was simply defending himself when he said Lee attacked him with a kitchen knife.
Both Momeni's defense team and prosecutors have had their chance to question Momeni. On Monday, jurors were able to ask the defendant more than 60 questions about the case through the judge, digging into the gaps and inconsistencies in his story.
The defense is nearing the end of its case, doubling down on its argument that Momeni was simply trying to stop Lee's sudden attack. Momeni claims that Lee became enraged over a bad joke he had made about the tech mogul being more interested in going to a strip club than spending more time with his family on his last night in town.
Many of jurors' questions focused on the deadly confrontation. After first being vetted by attorneys and the judge, the questions zeroed in on crucial details, including whether Momeni ever held the knife during the deadly scuffle.
Under oath, Momeni admitted he grabbed the knife after the altercation, reiterating his claim that he tossed it over a fence to keep it out of Lee's reach.
One critical question looms: where did the knife come from in the first place? That piece of the puzzle remains shrouded in uncertainty, and possibly out of the court's reach.
"This is a problem for the defense. This is one area that it's hard to give an explanation for that jurors may be totally comfortable with," said legal expert and attorney Shannan Dugan. "99% of the DNA on the handle is Nima Momeni's. If Bob Lee had the knife and was supposedly the one stabbing Nima Momeni, why wasn't there any of Bob Lee's DNA on the knife?"
Jurors also probed Momeni's state of mind on the night of the stabbing. He admitted to inhaling a small amount of cocaine about 90 minutes before the incident and having several beers with Lee. Still, he insisted he wasn't intoxicated.
"He gave them explanations. Whether they believe those explanations is another matter," said Dugan.
Momeni's attorneys also turned to a self-defense expert to reinforce Momeni's account. The expert demonstrated in court – using a pen to represent the knife – how Lee could have pulled the blade from his front right pocket during the altercation, arguing this scenario matched Momeni's claims.
But to the prosecution and to Lee's family, the re-enactment was another attempt by Momeni's defense team to rewrite the events that cost them their loved one.
"The only way they found somebody to defend that was to find somebody who has no expertise. Unfortunately, they cannot hear Bob's side of the story and they can't see who Bob was from what was in that courtroom today," said Timothy Oliver Lee.
His brother said he hopes jurors are instead spotting holes in Momeni's narrative.
"The first thing that was surprising was how far Nima will go and try and trash Bob's memory and try and trash our family to try and save himself," he explained.
Defense attorneys plan to call one final expert witness before resting their case, opening the door for the prosecution to begin its rebuttal. More witnesses and evidence are expected as the state seeks to convince the jury that Momeni deliberately killed Lee—a burden they must prove beyond a reasonable doubt to secure a conviction for first-degree murder.
