Some might have believed that the state had a pretty open-and-shut case against Nima Momeni, given the volume of circumstantial, video, and physical evidence they have against him for the murder of Bob Lee. But his defense team is going to try their best to keep this from being so open-and-shut.

We have known for certain for about a month now that the defense's theory in the Bob Lee murder case is that it was Lee who took the knife from sometime girlfriend Khazar Momeni's kitchen, and that it was Lee who showed a "flash of aggression" after being taken to a darkened area under the Bay Bridge by Nima Momeni, under the auspices of being driven back to his hotel.

The idea is that Momeni acted to defend himself and turned the knife on Lee, stabbing him in the heart and twice more, before discarding the knife.

"Pay attention to the evidence," said defense attorney Saam Zangeneh as he began his opening statement Monday afternoon, per KTVU, attempting to poke holes in the prosecution's case. Lee's drug use is clearly going to play a significant role in the defense's evidence, and Zangeneh referred in his statement to a "90-hour drug-fueled bender," and said, "People on these long term cocaine benders are aggressive, they use violence."

The defense will apparently be presenting evidence that Lee — who we know was in town for business after moving to Florida, but previously lived in SF full time — only got six hours of sleep over that early April weekend in 2023, and his bender continued all day Monday into Tuesday morning, when the stabbing occurred.

We also have a clue about how the defense plans to counter the mountain of evidence that suggests Momeni had a strong motive to protect or avenge his sister. Per KTVU, Zangeneh said, "The hours leading up to this, this motive they're trying to tell you, doesn't exist, and we have the text messages between Bob and Nima to prove it."

The prosecution began Monday giving their opening statement, and as KTVU reports, they highlighted a key piece of evidence that suggests Momeni was being deceitful immediately after the stabbing. Instead of telling Khazar that he and Lee got into an altarcation and that he defended himself, he lies and says that he dropped Lee off at a strip club.

This was also the text exchange in which Khazar Momeni said to her brother, "Nima, you're fucking psychotic sometimes."

As we learned earlier, Nima Momeni responded to his sister when she began questioning him after Lee's stabbing hit the news in the following days.

Khazar texted, "I’m gonno [sic] get to the bottom of this and find out what happened to bob," and she asked her brother where he dropped Lee off.

"I don’t know what [Lee] ended up doing at the bar or strip club, I just came home," Momeni responded.

Countering the defense's characterization of Lee as aggressive, lead prosecutor Omid Talai referred to Momeni as "an overprotective, wannabe tough guy," as the Chronicle reports, and said that Lee's final hours were "mellow, happy and calm"

As for the murder weapon, Talai told the jury, per KTVU, "What does the knife tell us? Well, there is something, ladies and gentlemen, called DNA and the DNA here tells us a whole hell of a lot."

The knife had Lee's DNA only the blade, and Momeni's DNA on the handle. And notably, none of Lee's DNA was found on the handle.

"We will ask you at the end of this trial to convict the defendant of murder," Talai said.

It sounds like we will not be getting any images from the courtoom in this trial, as the judge has ruled there will be no cameras — and so we will be seeing a lot of court sketch-artist images in the news in the coming weeks.

Testimony began Monday afternoon, following opening statements, with the prosecution calling SFPD Officer Joseph Rinaldi to the stand. Rinaldi was one of the first to find Lee where he lay, gravely wounded, the morning of the stabbing, as he was on patrol for Southern Station when the first call came in.

Previously: In Murder Trial of Bob Lee Stabbing Suspect Nima Momeni, Defense to Claim Lee Had 'Flash of Aggression'