Nearly 16 months after a jury convicted him of murdering Cash App founder Bob Lee, Nima Momeni is fighting for a new trial. His attorney will be in court Friday as part of that effort — the latest chapter in a case that has refused to stay closed.
“We are preparing a motion for a new trial based on a number of issues that prevented him from getting a fair trial the first time around,” said Daniel Shriro, the head of Momeni’s third legal team.
Momeni, who has yet to be sentenced, faces 16 years to life in prison.
Momeni stabbed Lee three times with a kitchen knife April 4, 2023, in Rincon Hill, a jury concluded. Lee’s body was found near the foot of the Bay Bridge, setting off a firestorm in the tech community and the city. Police arrested Momeni nine days later.
The ensuing trial was marked by lurid revelations of drug use by Lee and the sex life of Momeni’s sister. In December 2024, a jury convicted Momeni of second-degree murder.
“We want this to be over so bad as a family,” Lee’s brother Timothy Lee said Thursday. “Nima Momeni has had every chance with this trial to prove his innocence, but the fact is that he is guilty.”
Shriro, who has been planning to file the motion for months, says his team is closer after receiving reams of trial transcripts. These documents are essential to move forward, Shriro said.
Yet what Shriro thinks was unfair about the trial is unclear. He has yet to file the motion for a retrial and declined to go into details about his argument.
“It took the court reporters who worked on the case a year to get us the transcripts of relevant proceedings,” said Shriro. “We cannot properly assess what went wrong at trial without the transcripts, because it was a different set of attorneys who represented Mr. Momeni during the trial.”
He said he has also been fighting with the San Francisco Police Department to get disciplinary records for homicide inspector Brent Dittmer, who led the investigation.
“We are ensuring that we have access to all the relevant evidence,” said Shriro.
Since his conviction, Momeni has been busy in his San Francisco County jail cell. After firing his team of Florida lawyers who lost the case, he sued several media organizations, including The Standard, for publishing photos of him behind bars, alleging defamation and civil rights violations from unfair media coverage. The lawsuit is pending.
Meanwhile, Momeni and his family have been sued by Lee’s family, who claim Momeni’s relatives hid evidence. The case remains open.
The pending request for a new trial is not the first time Momeni or his lawyers have attempted to claim he was being treated unfairly. In December 2023, his legal team argued in court that he could not get a fair trial in San Francisco, saying his first lawyer, Paula Canny, was influenced by onetime Mayor Willie Brown to change how she approached the case. Canny denied this. She was fired before Momeni went to trial.
‘Nima Momeni has had every chance with this trial to prove his innocence, but the fact is that he is guilty.’
Timothy Lee
In that motion for a new venue, Momeni’s attorneys pointed to the extensive media coverage focused on their client’s family, as well as his roots in Iran. They also claimed that many tech workers in the Bay Area revered Lee, which could prevent Momeni from having an unbiased jury.
“The defense, in fact, fails to present any evidence at all in support of this motion,” said a motion filed at the time by the district attorney’s office.
Judge Harry Dorfman agreed on that count. It remains to be seen if he will change his mind this time around.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。