The California man who fatally stabbed a gay University of Pennsylvania student in 2018 was convicted on July 3 of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement.
Samuel Woodward, 26, was found guilty of murdering 19-year-old college student Blaze Bernstein in Southern California while he was home on winter break in early January 2018.
Bernstein, who was gay and Jewish, went missing on January 2, 2018, and his body was found a week later buried in a shallow grave in a park in Lake Forest.
Woodward, who attended high school in Orange County with Bernstein, was linked to the killing through DNA evidence. His cell phone and journals turned up anti-gay material and profanity-laced entries that recounted threats he made against gays online.
The trial, which began in April, centered not on whether Woodward murdered Bernstein but under what circumstances the murder occurred.
The defense sought to argue that Woodward did not hate anyone and had no plan to murder Bernstein when the two met in the Lake Forest park on January 2, 2018, hoping to convince the jury to convict Woodward of a lesser charge like second-degree murder or manslaughter.
Prosecutor Jennifer Walker used her closing arguments to reiterate Woodward’s ties to an anti-gay, neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division and said he was not “led by” or “victimized” by the group but sought it out.
Woodward’s attorney Ken Morrison plans to appeal the sentence, arguing that some of the trial judge’s rulings denied the jury the chance to “consider evidence critical to a fair trial.”
According to trial testimony, Woodward reconnected with Bernstein over a dating app in the months leading up to the attack. Woodward said he arranged to pick up Bernstein and take him to a nearby park. He said he repeatedly stabbed Bernstein after trying to take away Bernstein’s cell phone fearing that it had been used to take his picture.
With a conviction on the hate crime enhancement, Woodward could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
