Closing arguments began Monday in the trial of Nima Momeni for the April 2023 killing of tech entrepreneur Bob Lee, and prosecutors laid out their case one last time and shot down the defense's theory of the case as "workshopped" and "fabricated."
Both the prosecution and the defense were expected to need two hours apiece for the closing arguments. But despite being session for about four hours Monday, not including a break for lunch, only the prosecution got to deliver its closing, with Assistant District Attorney Dane Reinstedt delivering it.
As KTVU reports, Reinstadt began the day recounting Bob Lee's 911 call, his pleas for help, noting his few words which included "somebody stabbed me."
"Not that there was a struggle, not a passive 'I was stabbed.' 'Somebody stabbed me,' telling us what happened that night and begging for help over and over and over. The other person did not call 911 that night, nor did he ever," Reinstadt told the jurors.
The prosecutor went on to note how that other person, Momeni, "suffered not a single injury," while Lee was stabbed "three separate times, deep clean wounds, clear punctures, deep enough and hard enough to insert the knife into his body further than the length of the blade itself."
The defense team has argued that it was Lee, not Momeni, who took the knife out of Khazar Momeni's kitchen and pulled out it out in a fit of rage, and that Momeni had simply turned it back on him, three times, in self-defense.
And Reinstadt argued, in summation, as the Chronicle reports, that the defense looked at the evidence and "workshopped ideas to come up with something that could possibly match up with the wounds," and "The defense was fabricated."
Reinstadt also spoke to the defense's version of what was caught on camera, clandestinely, by an SFPD investigator in the days after the murder, a pantomiming of three stabbing motions that Momeni was seen making while speaking with an investigator for his former defense attorney, Paula Canny. Momeni claims that he was simply mimicing what Lee was doing with the knife.
"That is the most convoluted explanation of this video," Reinstadt, per KTVU. He added, "He's trying to tell you what's black is white and what's up is down."
Reinstadt also used to his advantage the fact that Momeni himself had taken the stand, and under cross-examination by the prosecution he was unable to remain calm and became agitated and hot-tempered.
"His demeanor was combative, he was interrogating, was trying to dodge,” Reinstadt said, per the Chronicle. "It gave us a window into who he really is. … that when he was here in court on trial for murder on his absolute best behavior to make the best impression on all of you, he still couldn’t help himself."
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who had not attended any previous days of the seven-week-long trial, attended briefly on Monday, as she told the Chronicle, "to see the closing argument."
Tim "Oliver" Lee, Lee's brother, spoke to reporters outside the courtroom Monday as he has in the past, saying of Reinstadt's closing, "Dane’s summation today was awesome." And he added that "tomorrow is going be tough" as the defense team presents their closing — which is sure to include plenty of character assassination against Lee, discussions of drug use, and a repeat of the defense's theory of the case and Khazar Momeni's contradictory version of events, which have all previously sent Lee's family members fuming.