The second day of the criminal trial of Nima Momeni, the accused killer of Cash App founder Bob Lee, moved far more slowly than the first: Prosecutors questioned witnesses from the San Francisco Police Department about meticulous processes at the crime scene, and defense attorneys attempted to chip away at those witnesses’ credibility.
Momeni’s defense attorney, Saam Zangeneh, used various lines of questioning with Sgt. Paul McIntosh, who responded on April 23, 2023, the night Lee was stabbed to death. McIntosh discovered the alleged murder weapon, a kitchen knife, at the scene that night.
In his questioning, Zangeneh tried to cast doubt on the police investigation and the prosecutors’ description of the scene as “dark and secluded.”
In one exchange, Zanganeh got McIntosh to acknowledge that the location where Lee was stabbed was not an “isolated place.” Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni, in a premeditated attack, lured Lee to a dark street to kill him, over an issue with Momeni’s younger sister, Khazar Momeni.
“Would you agree with me that, in the short clip of video surveillance, multiple people were seen?” Zangeneh asked. Zangeneh put several surveillance camera shots on the screen for the jury to see, pausing them repeatedly to show cars and a pedestrian passing by. He said that half a dozen vehicles were picked up by camera sensors. “Does this look like a desolated, isolated place?”
McIntosh conceded that it did not. But in later questioning with prosecutor Dane Reinstedt, McIntosh agreed the area was “quiet.”
On Monday, the jury heard, for the first time, Lee’s final moments on a 911 call, and attorneys presented two highly conflicting views of the stabbing. Momeni’s attorneys have not denied that the stabbing occurred, but have sought to portray their client as rightfully acting in self-defense against a drug-addled Lee.
Both sides agree that the two men left Khazar Momeni’s Millennium Tower condo. Soon after, surveillance video shows, they stood together for several minutes on Main Street outside Momeni’s white BMW. Eventually, they separated, with Lee bleeding out in the street while Nima Momeni drove away in his white BMW.
The courtroom was far less crowded today than on Monday, and many of Lee’s family and acquaintances who were present for the opening of the trial were not in court Tuesday.
Most of Tuesday was spent with attorneys questioning Officer Rosalyn Check, a San Francisco police crime scene investigator who responded the morning after the stabbing and assessed the crime scene and Lee’s hotel room, where she processed evidence and checked for DNA.
Check described a trail of blood from just outside the Caltrans parking lot on Main Street — where both sides agree the stabbing occurred — which she followed up the sidewalk, across the street, and back south on Main Street to the Portside II apartments, where Lee was found unconscious.
Attorneys on both sides led both Check and McIntosh down highly specific lines of questioning regarding their movements and actions the day of the stabbing.
As she followed the path along Main Street, Check said Lee’s blood spatter became heavier, which is typical after such a stabbing, “because of the heart pumping, pumping, pumping, trying to, you know, keep the blood in.”
Check also described the process of taking DNA from the handle and the blade of the knife, but said fingerprinting the handle would prove difficult because of its texture.
Defense attorneys have argued that Lee held the knife and attacked Momeni, which forced Momeni to turn the knife on Lee in self-defense. But no fingerprints were taken from the knife’s handle, and prosecutor Omid Talai said yesterday that Lee’s DNA was only found on the blade of the knife — which images showed today was smeared in blood.
At another moment, Zangeneh called into question the performance of law enforcement, even noting an off-color joke made by McIntosh and his colleague. McIntosh could be heard on his body-worn camera saying how it was a good thing Lee, whose full name was Robert Harold Lee, wasn’t named “Robert Edward Lee,” referring to Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general during the Civil War.
“And then one of the officers said, ‘Wouldn’t go over too well if we had to go to school over in Oakland,’” Zangeneh said. “You don’t think that that’s a racist joke?”
Judge Alexandra Gordon asked Zangeneh to move on.
Zangeneh also showed on surveillance camera footage that workers and pedestrians were seen in the area, but were never interviewed by officers. One apparently homeless man was discovered sleeping within the crime scene, but officers took his name and released him.
“Would you be surprised to learn that he was never interviewed?” Zangeneh asked McIntosh.
“Yes,” McIntosh replied.
Mike McMullen, another of Momeni’s attorneys, questioned Check at length about the precision of measurements taken at the crime scene, though it was unclear where these questions were leading.
Check will continue her testimony tomorrow.
After court let out for the day, Momeni’s defense attorneys seemed jovial and pleased with themselves.
“It doesn’t matter what I learned, it matters what the jury learns,” Zangeneh said.
Asked what jurors may have learned, he name-dropped his colleague: “That Mike McMullen is a terrific cross-examiner, I’ll tell you that! He’s doing great!”
I mean this is what these attorneys are getting paid lots of money to do, question everything. I still havent heard a good answer for why instead of calling 911, Momeni left Mr. Lee there and then also lied to his sister later that night on the phone if it was in self defense. Thats what I’m waiting to hear.
The only thing slimier than Momeni is the scumbags from Florida that are representing him.