On Tuesday, a jury in San Francisco found IT consultant Nima Momeni guilty of the 2023 stabbing death of tech executive Bob Lee, which was actually the result of a personal argument but raised questions about street crime in the city.
The jury convicted Momeni guilty of second-degree murder but cleared him of first-degree murder.
After deliberations began on December 4, a verdict was reached on Monday but read out on Tuesday.According to NBC Bay Area, the jury was urged to consider first-degree murder with an addition of employing a deadly weapon.
According to the station, Momeni and his primary lawyer, who attended the hearing via Zoom, seemed emotionless when the verdict was read.
According to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Momeni could spend 16 years to life in jail.
Early on April 4, 2023, Lee, 43, the creator of the well-known money transfer app Cash App, was discovered stabbed close to downtown San Francisco. After being taken to a hospital, he passed away from his wounds.
According to the prosecution, Momeni planned to kill Lee by stabbing him during a dispute about his sister’s drug use, whom Lee knew. Momeni claimed that Lee stabbed him after he defended himself after Lee assaulted him with a knife.
Although it was a lesser charge of second-degree murder, Lee’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters that the family is thankful for the guilty judgment.
“What transpired here is known to us. The jurors believed he did not have the intent to commit murder, but we believe he did,” he stated. “But what matters today is that we had a guilty verdict and that Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
According to recordings, a dispatcher informed police that a guy was crying and yelling for aid on the morning of the murder. He claimed that someone had stabbed him.
When Elon Musk of SpaceX wrote on social media following Lee’s passing on violence in San Francisco and asked the district attorney about violent repeat offenders, the case instantly became controversial.
Rather, a week later, San Francisco police revealed that Momeni, 40, whose sister was close with Lee, had been arrested. Momeni is not a repeat offender.
Momeni was charged with taking Lee to a remote location and using a 4-inch kitchen knife to stab him three times. Lee’s heart was stabbed.
Momeni argued with Lee about his sister, according to the prosecution, and he intended to kill Lee.
According to Momeni’s testimony, on April 3, his sister called and requested him to come get her from a friend of Lee’s who happens to be her heroin dealer. According to the sister’s testimony, she told her brother that she might have experienced sexual assault following her use of GHB.
Prosecutors alleged in court documents that on the night of the killing, a witness saw Momeni questioning Lee “regarding whether his sister was doing drugs or anything inappropriate” and that Lee had to reassure him that nothing had happened.
When Lee pulled a knife on him, Momeni said he responded in self-defense.
Momeni informed jurors that Lee had been using narcotics the night before the attack. They were in a car together but pulled over because Momeni thought Lee was going to vomit, and Momeni said Lee attacked him after Momeni made a joke that he’d rather spend his last night in San Francisco with family than at strip clubs.
When Lee drew the knife, Momeni said he had to defend himself. After a battle for the weapon, Momeni claimed that Lee eventually left down the street, but Momeni was unaware that he had been stabbed.
On October 14, the trial got underway. Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai said in opening statements that Lee, who was then the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency company MobileCoin, was “stabbed through his heart and left to die.”
“Of course, we presented evidence that we thought substantiated a first-degree murder conviction, but at the end of the day, the jury has weighed in with their verdict, and we respect what that is, and we do understand, based on the facts, how they might get there,” Jenkins, the DA, responded when asked why the jury chose second-degree murder over first-degree murder.
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