In a bombshell revelation on day two of closing arguments, Nima Momeni’s defense team said Cash App founder Bob Lee was using a knife to do cocaine hours before he ended up stabbed.
The allegation, supported by a video shown to jurors today for the first time, may bolster the claim that Momeni, on trial for murder, stabbed Lee in self-defense after Lee attacked him with a knife.
In the video, Lee and his friend Bo Mohazzabi are standing outside The Battery, a members-only club where they had drinks on the evening of April 3, 2023 — hours before Lee was killed. They each in turn bend forward to do a bump of apparent drugs off a long pointy object that protrudes out of Lee’s hand, and glints in the light. Lee can be seen digging the instrument into what appears to be a small bag and lifting it to his nose.
“That’s the knife!” exclaimed Momeni’s defense attorney, Saam Zangeneh, pointing across the courtroom at the video. “Look at the dimensions. Look at the size. What else could that be?”
In his hand, he waved a small cardboard knife with a 3.5 inch “blade” that was the approximate size of the paring knife that killed Lee and was found near the scene.
“As long as we have a reasonable theory, you have to find him not guilty,” Zangeneh said. “Unless they could show that our theory is not reasonable, then he’s not guilty.”
But prosecutor Omid Talai, in his rebuttal to Zangeneh’s closing statement, reiterated a key claim from the prosecution’s closing arguments yesterday: That 99 percent of the DNA on the handle of the knife was Momeni’s, and 98 percent on the blade was Lee’s.
The handle of the knife used by Lee for drugs, “if it was a knife,” would have contained Lee’s DNA, Talai said. “Should we believe the defense attorney … or should you believe science and DNA?”
Mohazzabi, for his part, refused to comment about what was shown in the video.
The defense appeared to hope that the video would raise questions about who attacked whom on April 4, 2023. It could also cast additional doubt on Mohazzabi’s insistence on the witness stand earlier in the trial that he did not remember consuming drugs with Lee or seeing Lee take any. In the courtroom, jurors could be seen peering in Mohazzabi’s direction as Zangeneh spoke.
Mohazzabi was a key witness in the case against Momeni, as he overheard an “aggressive” phone call in which he said Momeni was “interrogating” Lee about Momeni’s sister and possible sexual assault she experienced earlier that day. That phone call is part of the prosecution’s argument that Momeni was angry enough at Lee to kill him; casting doubt on Mohazzabi’s character could muddle that narrative.
Lee and Momeni were seen leaving together from the home of Momeni’s sister, who lives at the Millennium Tower, around 2 a.m. on April 4, 2023. Shortly after, Momeni’s white BMW pulled over on Main Street under the Bay Bridge, the two exited the car, and grainy surveillance footage shows Momeni’s figure lunge at Lee before the two separate.
Lee walked away and was later found bleeding out with three stab wounds, and Momeni drove home. Momeni has claimed he acted in self-defense after Lee attacked him over a “bad joke.” Defense attorneys provided Mission Local with an animation video that shows the incident as they say it occurred.
The new evidence suggesting Lee may have carried a knife could influence the jury that has, until now, received no definitive evidence about the origins of the Joseph Joseph kitchen knife that killed Lee. The only information about the knife’s provenance has been that Momeni’s sister has the same brand of knives in her home, where Lee and Momeni had both spent time prior to the stabbing.
Mohazzabi appeared in court today for closing arguments. Asked about the video and his apparent consumption of drugs with Lee, Mohazzabi deflected: “I’m just getting caught up, I just got here. I don’t have a statement yet.”
Lee’s DNA would have been expected on the knife handle. While the knife plunged five inches deep into Lee’s chest — seemingly past the 3.5 inch blade — Lee’s DNA was only found on the blade, with no apparent spillover onto the handle.
Before the big reveal, Zangeneh’s closing statement worked to debunk the motive prosecutors have ascribed to Momeni for killing Lee. Yesterday, prosecutor Dane Reinstedt outlined how Momeni’s sister’s alleged sexual assault at the hands of Jeremy Boivin, a man to whom Lee introduced her, drove Momeni to kill.
“Imagine how crazy it sounds, a guy decides to kill the friend of someone that touched his sister’s butt,” Zangeneh said.
Zangeneh emphasized that Momeni’s narrative of events lined up with the evidence, and accused prosecutors of omitting other important pieces of evidence or botching the investigation: The alleged murder weapon and Momeni’s jacket that he wore the night of the incident were never entered into evidence; crime scene investigators did not take fingerprints from the knife, or attempt to question an apparent unhoused person or driver who were near the scene during the incident.
He attempted to restore Momeni’s image, calling him “quirky” and “socially awkward” while discrediting Mohazzabi, the prosecutors’ primary witness.
Zangeneh said Mohazzabi was dishonest, pointing out photos in Lee’s hotel room — where the two friends had spent the afternoon — with the coffee table covered in apparent cocaine residue, and surveillance video of Mohazzabi pulling out a green apparent baggie of drugs and inspecting it upon leaving an alleged drug dealer’s house.
The jury, which lost one member today and had to take in an alternate, consists of six women and six men — five of whom are Asian, and seven white. Tomorrow, after they receive their final instructions, they will begin deliberations to reach their verdict.
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