A judge today denied the request to move the homicide case against Nima Momeni, accused of murdering tech executive Bob Lee last April, out of San Francisco. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Eric Fleming said that the case’s notoriety and public knowledge of the incident are not enough that a potential jury pool in San Francisco would be tainted.
Momeni’s tentative trial date was set today, for May 20.
The judge said that while Lee’s company, Cash App, was well-known, Lee himself was largely familiar to the public only after his killing.
“Yes, he’s the Cash App founder, but it’s really the murder of him that the court believes is why individuals are more aware of him,” Fleming said.
Fleming considered the results of a 100-person survey submitted by Momeni’s defense attorneys, that found, while 86 percent of participants had heard about the murder, only 41 percent agreed that Lee was a “Silicon Valley icon.” Only 27 percent of respondents said they had formed opinions about Momeni or seen the news articles mentioned by defense attorneys as potentially biasing a jury pool.
The judge acknowledged that the survey results suggested “negative opinions and potential bias exists against the defendant,” but said the survey cuts both ways: ”There are negative opinions and potential bias against the victim in this case, as well,” he said.
Fleming added that, while the case had been sensationalized and extensively covered in the media, coverage has died down nearly a year after the killing. And, he said, San Francisco is “a heavily populated urban center,” and the circumstances of the murder were not “gruesome” enough to warrant a move to a different jurisdiction.
“No murder is typical … but when you think about the gory details that occur in sensationalized murders, this does not fit that,” Fleming said.
The District Attorney’s Office, in fact, filed a motion in January that referenced other high-profile and publicized cases that did not get a change of venue, like the 1980s case against Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez, who murdered 13 people.
Momeni is accused of stabbing Lee to death on a Rincon Hill street in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023. Surveillance camera footage showed the two men leaving a gathering at Millennium Tower together earlier that night. They then entered Momeni’s white BMW, surveillance footage showed, which also showed the BMW speeding away from the scene where Lee bled out in the street.
Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni killed Lee over his relationship with Momeni’s sister, Khazar Momeni.
Momeni’s attorneys seemed unsurprised by the ruling. In January, attorney Tony Brass had already prefaced the hearing by saying, “Generally speaking, change of venue motions are very difficult to win.”
“We always file these motions,” Bradford Cohen, one of Momeni’s attorneys from Florida, said today. “In this case, I thought the evidence was very strong to move the trial. The judge felt otherwise.”
In a motion filed in November, Momeni’s defense attorneys argued that Lee was akin to a hometown hero in Silicon Valley, and likened his killing to the murder of a Lakers basketball player in Los Angeles. They pointed to negative coverage of Momeni as possibly having influenced the community against him.
Criminal defense attorney Adam Gasner, who is not affiliated with Momeni’s case, said while it was unsurprising that Momeni’s attorneys tried to get a change of venue, those are “exceedingly rare.”
A juror’s familiarity with a case or victim does not necessarily preclude them from serving on a jury, he said, as long as they could remain impartial.
“It’s a risky motion. Even if it’s granted, it may not be in the defendant’s best interest,” Gasner continued, noting that San Francisco has a diverse jury pool, and another “much more homogenous, much more conservative” jury might not work in Momeni’s favor.
Phone data
Last week, Fleming ruled to release seven years of data from Bob Lee’s two phones to the defense as evidence, a win for the defense. However, that data still must be extracted and provided to attorneys by an outside company, and the trial date may change, depending on how quickly that process is completed.
Privacy laws in California ensure that only phone data that is relevant to a case should be released during investigations, but defense attorneys last week won their argument to access more of Lee’s phone data.
“The prosecution is going to do a seven-year pull on both of Bob Lee’s phones, because that’s when Bob Lee met Khazar Momeni, and the government is alleging that that relationship had merit,” attorney Saam Zangeneh told Mission Local at the time.
Why on earth did you use the goofiest image you could find? What is Saam doing– Sniffing his upper lip?
“We always file these motions” – because there are fees to be generated from clients. Public defenders do not always file these motions – because they are perennial losers. I feel bad for defendants who might qualify for PDs, but think private representation will be better somehow. They just get bled dry.