In his third day of testimony, Nima Momeni, who is on trial for the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, seemed to contradict some of his earlier statements.
For the most part, Momeni answered the questions about the April 2023 incident and aftermath using very similar phrasing as he did during two days of testimony last week. Most significantly, Momeni testified earlier that the altercation between Lee and himself began over a “joke” he made to Lee about spending time with his family instead of going to a strip club.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Alexandra Gordon, who posed questions through the morning on behalf of the jurors, asked Momeni what happened after this joke, and whether Momeni ever apologized for it.
That’s when Momeni mentioned knowing that Lee was in town to see his children.
This raised an issue: Last week, under questioning from prosecutor Omid Talai, Momeni said he wasn’t aware of Lee having any family.
Judge Gordon later circled back to the inconsistency.
“Do you recall Mr. Talai asking you whether it would surprise you to know that Mr. Lee had a good relationship with his family?” Gordon asked. “And do you recall that you said, ‘I didn’t even know that Bob had a family?’”
Momeni took a long pause before responding. “I — knew he had a family,” he said. “My sister had said he was in town … to hang out with the kids and family.”
“So … you did actually know that he had a family?” Gordon asked.
“I just — he didn’t act like it,” Momeni said.
Momeni testified today and last week that, when he was driving with Lee in the early morning of April 4, 2023, they pulled over and got out of the car under the Bay Bridge.
Lee, he said, wanted to continue partying, and suggested going to a strip club. Momeni testified last week that he made a comment about spending time with family over visiting strip clubs, and that the comment drove Lee to attack him with a knife he pulled from the pocket of his jacket.
Talai: You don’t have any [information] from your sister who knew him, saying he’s always in town and has a good relationship with his family?
Momeni: There was zero information about his family. We never talked about his family.
Momeni: In fact, when he was hanging out with us, I didn’t even know he had a family.
The other instances of Momeni contradicting earlier testimony were on minor issues, such as whether he took a line or a “small bump” of cocaine the night of the stabbing.
Jurors also asked many questions clarifying Momeni’s actions after the stabbing occurred. They asked whether Momeni called the police about his sister’s alleged sexual assault earlier in the day, or about Lee allegedly attacking him the following morning when the altercation occurred.
Momeni repeated again today that the stabbing must have occurred as Momeni attempted to control Lee’s arm, and today added that he still couldn’t believe what had happened. Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Momeni, believing his sister was sexually assaulted, was angry at Lee and lured him to the dark street under the Bay Bridge to carry out the attack.
“Why didn’t you call the police after Mr. Lee attacked you? And why didn’t you, for example, pursue an assault case against him?” the judge asked on behalf of the jurors.
“Everything seemed fine at the time,” said Momeni, who instead warned his sister not to let Lee come back over to her place. Momeni has maintained that he had no idea that Lee was injured, and learned of his death from a news article. At that time, he said, he contacted attorneys to “protect” himself.
Jurors also asked Momeni to clarify when his car began giving him issues. He testified last week that he had his white BMW serviced in March, but that it began giving him issues shortly after the April 4, 2023 incident, so he took it to his mother’s house in Mill Valley.
Police investigators, who began surveilling Momeni on April 5, never found Momeni’s car or observed it at his Emeryville home, a fact prosecutors have noted as suspicious.
Momeni stepped down from the witness stand shortly before noon, and is not expected to return.
Later in the afternoon, retired SFPD officer Steve Pomatto, who worked in defensive tactics, testified before the jury, reiterating statements he made in a pre-trial hearing that Lee’s external wounds were consistent with Momeni’s self-defense argument. This would entail Lee pulling a knife and Momeni grabbing Lee’s hand or wrist to push the knife back into Lee.
Talai attempted to discredit Pomatto, bringing up allegations that he had lied on a job application and had never led homicide investigations while with the police department.
Even so, Pomatto maintained that, while other scenarios were possible, the “most reasonable explanation” for Lee’s wounds would be that Lee was the original aggressor.
Pomatto will continue to testify tomorrow, and the defense team is expected to call only one additional witness. Depending on a ruling from the judge, prosecutors may call rebuttal witnesses.
This should be critical. Jurors REALLY pay attention when the judge weighs in. They may or may not catch a point the lawyers are trying to flesh out. This guy’s whole self-defense spiel (to try to counter the clear video and forensic evidence) is “I made a joke about his family and he went nuts and attacked me.” But he contradicted himself on the one point he was trying to get the jury to buy? I’m betting the jury caught that important inconsistency. And the prosecutor will (or at least should) hammer this home during closings.
The video certainly is not “clear” by any stretch and the “forensic” evidence doesn’t really at all indicate who began the attack. Let’s not mischaracterize what has already been established pretty well. If Lee began it, self defense may apply. If Momeni did, it does not. The “contradiction” in question is pretty minor and may come down to a turn of phrase in how Momeni was describing Lee as not much of a family man. Whether the jury believes him or not, it’s a trivially minor point unrelated to what provably happened or didn’t. Of course as a prosecutor, hammering the defendant’s credibility is job 1. As a jury, weighing all of these facts and factors in total is the job. This tiny inconsistency “itself” was not important at all.
This would definitely be a big deal to me if I were on the jury. What Momeni said has a plain literal meaning: he did not know Lee had a family when they were hanging out. And that literal meaning, if believed, would make his point very strongly: Lee was so disconnected from talking about his family, Momeni didn’t even know he had one. So he chose to say something he knew wasn’t true, hoping his audience (the jury) would believe it, because that would help him out. In short, he lied — that’s what a lie is.
If he lied on the stand about that, what else did he lie about?
That doesn’t in itself mean he’s guilty, or that there’s no reasonable doubt. But it is a good reason to take the rest of his testimony as meaning very little.
Can you point to any other “lies” in the testimony? One misstatement is all you’ve got so far. That certainly doesn’t prove everything he said is a lie, what a crazy notion.
Again, one person’s misstatement does not prove who began the altercation in question. Period. The video was NOT clear, or this case would be over already, and the forensics obviously help the defense’s notion of self defense as much as they implicate a premeditated murder. It’s not as cut and dry as some want to think, for their unrelated reasons. It’s not a lie to say something and have it misconstrued, there’s certainly a lot more wiggle room in the statement than you seem to believe – and extrapolating the entire case based on that is just silly from an unserious position not based on the merits of the prosecution whatsoever. I’m not saying you have to believe a word he says, but predicating a murder case on that statement being false is hilarious.
WHY did they pull over and get out of the car under the Bay Bridge if not for a stabbing?
They already covered that. They said Lee spilled his beer.
‘Just a baby bump, I promise.’
Did they turn up any coke on Lee? If not, where did it go?
They turned up several drugs IN Lee. It’s unclear what was found on his person.