Jury selection began on Tuesday in the trial of Nima Momeni – the man accused in which technology executive Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in the early morning hours of April 4, 2023.
Eighteen is the magic number that the defense and prosecution try to reach in a jury: twelve jurors and six alternates. Everyone must approach the process from an impartial perspective.
“It’s going to be difficult for the defense, not impossible, but it’s going to be very tough,” Julian Gilbert, a trial conduct consultant, told CBS News Bay Area.
Jury selection is one of Gilbert’s specialties. He looks at every factor that can help or hurt either side, from a juror’s personal experience to the amount of media coverage they have consumed.
“It’s really more of a de-selection process,” Gilbert explained. “The two sides are really looking for jurors that they want to get rid of. They’re not trying to select jurors. They’re trying to deselect jurors.”
It’s a counterintuitive balance, Gilbert said, with attorneys wanting to disqualify jurors who might be favorable to Bob Lee’s experiences.
“Bob Lee may not have been as famous as they make him out to be, but I think he was well known in that circle,” Gilbert says of the likelihood of judges being selected for their technical experience. ‘Those people may be a bit younger. They will be the kind of people like I said, the Silicon Valley brothers, maybe people who are good for the prosecution here.’
Lee is known for his role in founding Cash App and as chief product officer of MobileCoin, now Sentz.
“The trial has begun,” the judge said at the start of the day. “The right to a jury trial is one of the most important rights each of us has. To have a case tried by a fair and impartial jury.”
The group of potential jurors included a broad group of San Franciscans — from bar owners and lawyers to travel and sports enthusiasts.
Prosecutors are trying to eliminate potential jurors who may be favorable to Momeni’s story.
“Those who have felt accused, maybe even wrongly accused, especially those who have felt wrongly accused, but those who have felt accused will probably be good for the defense,” Gilbert explained. “Those who come from a very close family, those who have had to play the role of big brother in the past, because I think that is an important aspect in this case.”
During jury selection – during which cameras were not allowed inside – a prosecutor asked an initial group of 18 jurors about the police’s biases. The prosecution has named more than two dozen SFPD officers as potential witnesses and worked Tuesday to exclude anyone who has had extreme run-ins with the law.
Prosecutor Omid Talai told potential jurors: “What I don’t want is anyone to be on either side of the spectrum. I don’t want anyone to prefer a police officer or come in with a negative feeling. I just want people who can be fair and impartial.”
Several jurors expressed possible bias toward police officers, but indicated they could leave their issues out of the courtroom to remain neutral during the trial.
“But in the context of this case, I would start in the middle. Where I would be outside the courtroom, I wouldn’t do that,” said one potential juror.
The judge explained that the ability to judge facts beyond a reasonable doubt is most important to jurors, and Gilbert said prosecutors have an interesting tactic for seeing how potential jurors can do just that.
“[A prosecutor] can hold the pen behind their back, in front of the judges, and they drop the pen. And no one sees the pen fall, but they hear it fall. And then he asks the judges: What happened to the pen?” Gilbert explained.
“They’re looking for people who will say, ‘Well, I don’t really know because I didn’t see the pen fall. I have to see it fall before I know the pen falls. I heard it.’ Maybe it fell, but I don’t know because I didn’t see it.’ These people have unusually high standards. Their burden of proof is high, and that’s why prosecutors want to identify these people,” he said.
Speaking to reporters before jury selection, lawyer Saam Zangeneh said jury selection is one of the most important parts of the case.
“These are the people who pass judgment on innocence or guilt,” he said. “You know, we want people who can be fair and impartial, who will listen to the evidence and, you know, follow the rules. That’s all you can ask, right?’
During jury selection Tuesday, Zangeneh focused on one of their key defense strategies: self-defense.
Most jurors said they believed a person has the right to defend themselves from an attack, and about half said they were uncomfortable with California’s position, which allows people to defend themselves without retreating if they think they are in immediate danger.
Zangeneh then focused on drug use – another major theme of the case.
A handful of potential jurors explained they had experience with substance abuse and some said they could tell when someone was under the influence of drugs.
Both the defense and the prosecution can each eliminate ten potential jurors for no reason at all.
Gilbert says this is all part of the strategy.
“There is a saying in jury selection: those who talk walk and those who have nothing to say stay,” he explained. “It’s usually those who don’t express their opinions as much and potential biases that make up the jury, and those who speak out and express their opinions, they tend to be excused for both reasons. or for writs of execution. And so you often sit in the middle with the jury members.”
But for both the defense and the prosecution, jury selection is one of the most difficult parts of the job.
“It can be a heavy burden to try to find people who will be honest in this matter,” Gilbert said.
“I would feel some kind of responsibility, you know, if I was on the defense side, and similarly for the prosecution, you know, you feel very responsible as well, because they, you know, clearly believe that this person has committed this crime, otherwise they would not have filed charges against him. And so they also have a very heavy duty and responsibility.
