Nima Momeni's bid to overturn his conviction for murdering Cash App founder Bob Lee reached an evidentiary hearing this week on a California Racial Justice Act claim — but a San Francisco judge has already whittled it down to a short list of words, several of which were lifted from text messages Momeni's own sister wrote about him.

The framing on the wire — that Lee's killer "claims trial prosecutors were racially biased" — flattens a far more contested picture. Superior Court Judge Patrick Thompson found only a "limited prima facie showing" and allowed the appeal to proceed on a handful of items: the words "animal" and "psycho," references to Momeni's perceived instability, a mention of a keffiyeh, and whether the district attorney's overall strategy was rooted in bias. He tossed the rest. And the most inflammatory phrases the defense points to didn't come from prosecutors at all — they came from Momeni's sister, Khazar.

Momeni, 42, was found guilty of second-degree murder in December 2024 for stabbing Lee under the Bay Bridge in the early hours of April 4, 2023. He has not yet been sentenced and faces 16 years to life. His current attorney, Daniel Shriro — who did not represent him at trial — is invoking California's Racial Justice Act (external source, opens in a new tab), a 2021 law meant to strip racial and ethnic bias out of every stage of a prosecution, from the charge to the sentence. Momeni immigrated from Tehran with his mother and sister at 14, seeking asylum.

Shriro's core argument is that stereotypes about Middle Eastern men seeped into the trial. He cited Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai's reference to the killing as an "honor killing," and text messages — shown to jurors — in which Momeni's sister described him as an "animal 24/7," an "overprotective psycho," and "psychotic." Those descriptions amounted to character evidence, Shriro argued at a July hearing, per Mission Local (external source, opens in a new tab) — and were made worse, in his telling, because the traits were tied to Momeni's ethnicity.

That is where the claim gets complicated. As SFist reported (external source, opens in a new tab), the "psycho" and "animal" language originated not with the prosecution but in Khazar Momeni's own texts about her brother. Assistant District Attorney Natalie Fuchs argued those words are exempt under the Racial Justice Act precisely because they came directly from evidence, not from the state's rhetoric. She called the defense's account "abstract" and said it was contradicted by the trial record.

Judge Thompson was openly skeptical when he first heard the motion in July. He interrupted Shriro repeatedly and rejected one of the defense's marquee examples — that trial judge Alexandra Gordon revealed bias by barring a defense lawyer's use of the phrase "young lady," making faces, and reprimanding the defense. "Judges don't dissect intentions," Thompson said, noting a judge's right to manage a courtroom.

Still, Thompson let a slice of the case survive. While racial bias was "not necessarily" present, he said, "a nexus has been provided." Only the "animal"/"psycho" terms, the instability references, the keffiyeh mention, and the DA's broader strategy would advance; Gordon's facial expressions, the "young lady" ruling, and comments about the defense's right to counsel were thrown out. "The court cannot weigh evidence," Thompson said. "This question is better answered in an evidentiary hearing."

What an RJA finding would actually change here is unresolved. Momeni was convicted after a seven-week trial and seven days of deliberation; under the law, a judge who finds bias can order a new trial or modify a sentence. Momeni has still not been sentenced in the killing.

Judges don't dissect intentions," Thompson said, noting a judge's right to manage a courtroom.

The killing itself remains one of the most scrutinized in recent San Francisco memory. Prosecutors argued Momeni sought revenge after coming to believe Lee had let his sister be assaulted; the defense argued self-defense, saying Lee held the knife first. A separate wrongful-death suit (external source, opens in a new tab) filed by Lee's family in 2025 accuses Momeni's relatives of conspiring to destroy evidence. However the Racial Justice Act claim lands, the question the court has agreed to examine is narrow — and the defense's strongest-sounding evidence is words a jury heard from the defendant's own family.