Jurors in San Francisco began their second day of deliberation Thursday in the murder trial of Nima Momeni, the man accused of in the 2023 fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
The jury resumed deliberations at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning, a day after first receiving the case following some final instructions from the judge presiding over the trial.
Momeni has been charged with first-degree murder, which carries a prison sentence of 26 years to life. Jurors are also considering murder and manslaughter in the case.
The judge told the jurors that whatever verdict they reached had to be unanimous.
The state has accused Momeni of it fatally stabbing tech manager Lee in a remote part of San Francisco’s East Cut neighborhood on an early morning in April 2023.
Jurors are considering 21 days sometimes controversial testimonies and thousands of pieces of evidence as they weigh the fate of Nima Momeni.
The start of deliberations came a day after Momeni’s lawyers concluded their closing arguments with a surprising video clip they claimed Lee did cocaine outside a private club with the same knife he was used to kill hours later.
Wednesday morning Lee’s ex-wife Krista reconsidered those claimswhich provides an alternative response to what her ex-husband had in his hand outside of battery.
‘It wasn’t a knife he was holding. It was a metal collar. It’s something Bob has been using for years. It’s about this long,” Lee said, holding her thumb and index finger about four to five inches apart. “And I can only hope that it will emerge from the evidence.”
The possibility that the object in Bob Lee’s hand could be a collar is unlikely to come up in the jury’s deliberations, as it was never brought up in court.
When asked why they only advanced their theory that Lee was seen in a video with the knife hours earlier at the end of the trial, the lawyers said it was all part of their strategy.
“That’s a huge moment in the case because it shows that he was actually in possession of what everyone in that room knows is a knife,” attorney Bradford Cohen said.
“No collar pin was found at the scene. She is in the process of fabricating evidence. Because if it had been the collar pin, they would have found the collar pin on him,” lawyer Saam Zangeneh added.
