Let's rewind. When Bob Lee was found staggering through the streets of SoMa with fatal stab wounds in the early hours of April 4, 2023, the story initially fed into every narrative about San Francisco's decline — random street violence, a city in freefall. Then it turned out the killing wasn't random at all. Momeni, a tech-adjacent figure, was arrested and eventually convicted of second-degree murder after a trial that captivated the city and the broader tech world.

The jury heard the evidence. They deliberated. They reached a verdict. And now Momeni's defense team wants to hit the reset button, arguing the trial was fundamentally unfair.

Look, everyone deserves due process — that's a principle we take seriously around here. The right to appeal and challenge a conviction is baked into our legal system for good reason. But "I didn't get a fair trial" is also the single most common post-conviction claim in American criminal law. The bar for actually getting a new trial is high, and it should be.

What's frustrating is the limbo this creates for a city that desperately needed this case resolved cleanly. The Lee murder became a symbol — first of San Francisco's crime problem, then of the complicated, messy reality behind the headlines. A prolonged legal saga doesn't serve anyone, least of all the Lee family, who have already endured an agonizing public trial.

Momeni's attorneys will need to present specific, substantive grounds for why the trial was unfair — not just dissatisfaction with the outcome. Courts aren't in the business of granting mulligans because the verdict went the wrong way.

We'll be watching this one closely. San Francisco has enough unresolved stories. This shouldn't become another one.