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After six weeks of testimony, prosecutors charging Nima Momeni with the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee started their closing arguments — and urged the jury to convict Momeni of premeditated, first-degree murder.
“There is only one reasonable conclusion about what it is that happened that night,” said Dane Reinstedt, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office, in a monologue that spanned nearly three hours and most of the day. “All of the evidence together paints a very clear picture, one that is actually pretty simple.”
Reinstedt pieced together witness testimony and other evidence to illustrate Momeni’s motive and guilt in killing Lee in the early morning of April 4, 2023. He said the stabbing was not self-defense, as Momeni has claimed, but a willful attempt to avenge the alleged sexual assault of his sister by a man Lee introduced her to.
“That protectiveness of the defendant’s little sister is what led to all of this,” Reinstedt said.
Reinstedt presented several new pieces of evidence that jurors had not previously seen, like camera footage of Lee’s apparently empty jacket pocket; Momeni had previously testified that Lee was carrying a knife in that pocket. The prosecutor also showed a text message from Momeni’s sister calling Momeni an “animal 24/7.”
The courtroom was more full than usual as the lengthy trial approached its end, even drawing District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to listen in as her team made its final request to the jury. To get a first-degree murder conviction, prosecutors must prove to jurors beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Momeni acted intentionally, deliberately, and with premeditation to kill Lee but also that Momeni did not act in lawful self-defense.
Earlier in the morning, Judge Alexandra Gordon instructed jurors on the law and how to weigh the evidence to determine whether Momeni is guilty of different levels of homicide, ranging from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter.
Motive
“The evidence here shows a deep, deep motive, one that’s perhaps even understandable,” Reinstedt said, after a brief explanation of legal definitions and replaying in the courtroom Lee’s 911 call, in which he repeatedly calls for help.
Reinstedt said that Momeni wanted to hold Lee accountable for the alleged sexual assault of his sister, Khazar, who has been a key character in the case.
Khazar introduced Lee and Momeni a few days prior and, earlier in the morning of April 3, 2023, Lee introduced Khazar to Jeremy Boivin, the man she said assaulted her.
Through that introduction, Lee was “the catalyst that set these events in motion,” Reinstedt said. “He then left her at Mr. Boivin’s apartment alone, something the defendant very well could hold [Lee] accountable for.”
During that time, Khazar said Boivin assaulted her; she later called her brother and husband to come get her. Momeni taking the primary “protective role” of caring for his sister, even over her own husband, Reinstedt said, highlighted their close relationship.
Momeni, in his testimony on the witness stand, has insisted that he was never angry with Lee. And he said that Lee, in “vouching for” Boivin, helped allay Momeni’s initial suspicions of Boivin by the time of the stabbing.
“The defendant is trying so hard to minimize his own motive in this case,” Reinstedt said. He pointed out Momeni’s past testimony that he wouldn’t necessarily be angry if his sister was given drugs and raped; instead, he said it “depends on the situation.”
Reinstedt also pointed out Momeni’s history of similar behavior that may have been reflected in Lee’s death — in March 2023, text messages between Momeni and his sister suggest he had planned to lure his father to Turkey under false pretenses, to have him arrested for assaulting his sister when they were children in Iran.
“He’s willing to lie, to play a character in order to get what it is that he wants,” Reinstedt said. He added that Momeni used “the same strategy” to get Lee to leave with him in the early morning of April 4, 2023.
Dishonesty
And this was not Momeni’s only apparent “lie,” said Reinstedt, who urged jurors to consider dishonesty in determining Momeni’s guilt.
“He’s lying to his sister way back when, he’s lying to you here in court, in [a] number of ways,” Reinstedt said, giving examples on a slideshow.
For example, Momeni gave conflicting testimony about whether he knew Lee had a family — early in his testimony he said he had no idea, but later, questioned by jurors, he said he knew all along that Lee had a family.
Momeni’s explanation of the stabbing hinges on a “bad joke” he said he made about Lee’s family and priorities, which purportedly drove Lee to attack him first.
Reinstedt called the self-defense argument “fabricated” and “practiced” with the support of two paid experts. He repeatedly emphasized that Momeni’s story didn’t add up with slides titled “BUT…”
Reinstedt accused Momeni of “actively concealing evidence.” Investigators could not locate the car Momeni drove Lee in, or the jacket Momeni was wearing the night of the stabbing. While Momeni, his sister, and mother handed their phones over to his legal team, records shown in court revealed that Momeni’s brother-in-law was researching how to erase an iPhone in the days after Lee’s death.
Reinstedt also noted that Momeni texted his sister that he went straight home after leaving her house with Lee. In reality, he and Lee spent more than 30 minutes together after leaving Khazar’s Millennium Tower apartment, and then Momeni allegedly stabbed Lee to death.
“I don’t know what he ended up doing at the bar or strip club, I just came home and started preparing for the rape case against both of them as I told u,” read a text from Momeni to his sister that evening.
“Clearly a false statement made by the defendant,” Reinstedt said.
A “fabulous” story
And while Momeni had reason to attack Lee, Reinstedt said, Lee had “not one conceivable reason” to carry a knife and attack Momeni.
“Nothing about the defendant’s story makes any sense,” Reinstedt said. “It is only his word that it relies upon.”
Reinstedt revealed new evidence that jurors will see in the deliberation room. These include:
- A “flurry of activity” in Momeni’s phone logs on April 3, 2023, which Reinstedt said demonstrates Momeni seeking someone to blame for his sister’s alleged assault.
- Text messages showing Momeni sending information to his family about the risks of GHB, the “date rape drug” that his sister had taken with Jeremy Boivin.
- A new video Reinstedt showed the jury today shows Momeni and Lee leaving Khazar’s home together just before the stabbing, with Lee’s apparently empty jacket pocket flapping in the wind.
Perhaps most importantly, the knife that killed Lee and was found at the scene tells a damning story: Investigators found the DNA on the handle of the knife overwhelmingly came from Momeni, while DNA on the blade of the knife overwhelmingly came from Lee.
That did not support Momeni’s claim that Lee pulled the knife, and Momeni redirected it onto him, Reinstedt said.
“We’re saying that Bob had this knife for some extended period of time, gripping it with a death grip — literally — and yet didn’t leave his DNA on it?” Reinstedt asked disbelievingly.
Momeni admittedly held the knife by its handle last after he and Lee parted ways. And while Momeni’s defense team has attempted to cast doubt on the accuracy of the DNA evidence, using expert testimony that different people shed different amounts of DNA and that — it is up to the jury to decide what to do with this information.
“There is one very straightforward, easily understandable, simple, reasonable series of events that happened here,” Reinstedt said. “That the defendant brought this knife … [brought Lee] under the Bay Bridge, stabbed him three times, including through the heart, and left him to bleed out there.”
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Source: missionlocal.org