By EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
The attorneys for Tiffany Li and her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat asked for a new trial yesterday (Nov. 23), saying that jurors in the murder case are trying to interpret facts differently from how the prosecution and defense presented them.
As the jurors were leaving the Redwood City courtroom on Tuesday, the jury’s foreperson handed a note to Judge Robert Foiles asking if jurors could interpret the cellphone tower records that were presented as evidence in the trial.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said juries trying to interpret records in a case is like if you get an X-ray, and instead of listening to what your doctor says, you try to understand it yourself.
Foiles yesterday told the jury that it can’t do any interpretation of its own of the records, and has to agree with how one of the sides presented the records.
Foiles yesterday told the jurors that if they had done any interpretation of their own, they must discard it. He also ordered that the phone tower records be removed from the jury deliberation room. Today (Nov. 14) is the eleventh day of jury deliberations in the Li case.
It is up to the jury to determine if the two are responsible for the death of Li’s ex-boyfriend, Keith Green, whose body was found in May 2016 with a bullet to the head in Sonoma County.
The attorneys for Li and Bayat say it was another man, Olivier Adella, who killed Green during an attempted kidnapping.
But prosecutor Bryan Abanto said Li and Bayat killed Green because she feared losing custody of their two daughters. Adella is in jail and will go to court once the jury trial wraps up.
The case drew national headlines on April 7, 2016, when Li, who is from Hillsborough, bailed out on $62 million in property bonds. Li comes from a wealthy Chinese family that made their money in real estate.
Family and friends of Li and Green have packed the Redwood City courtroom.
If a new trial is needed, let’s make sure that the prosecutor prosecutes her to the full extend permitted by the law. I believe the next jury will find her guilty of killing Green. Whether she is innocent or not, that can be left to the appeal court and the court of criminal appeal in California to decide. She needs to stay behind the bar like her corrupted family in China. Those wealthy unlawful people came to US need to be reminded of following laws. Money can do lots of things,but money should not make you above the laws.