When Samuel Woodward determined to kill a homosexual highschool classmate in January 2018, based on a prosecutor, he selected a weapon with symbolic significance: a knife together with his father’s identify etched on it.
Throughout his homicide trial in Orange County Superior Court docket, each side portrayed the 26-year-old Woodward as a younger man who struggled together with his sexuality rising up in a conservative Newport Seashore household, with a very disapproving father.
“Who higher to show to that you just’re not homosexual than this homophobic father?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Walker instructed jurors. “‘I’m not homosexual, look what I simply did.’”
Walker’s remarks got here throughout closing arguments, final week and early this week, in Woodward’s three-month trial. Jurors started deliberating Woodward’s destiny Tuesday afternoon.
Woodward is charged with first-degree homicide, with a hate-crime enhancement, for stabbing Blaze Bernstein 28 instances in a Lake Forest park.
Woodward’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison, acknowledged that his shopper was responsible of the killing, which he referred to as a “hideous crime,” however stated it was voluntary manslaughter, not homicide.
“There’s no premeditation or deliberation,” he instructed jurors, arguing that Bernstein had provoked Woodward. He stated the killing had no connection to his shopper’s curiosity within the Atomwaffen Division, an extremist group whose anti-gay, anti-Jewish propaganda was discovered on Woodward’s laptop.
Bernstein was each Jewish and homosexual, however the hate-crime enhancement solely applies to his sexual orientation.
On the night time of the killing, Bernstein and Woodward exchanged flirtatious textual content messages. They’d identified one another casually years earlier on the Orange County College of the Arts, the place Woodward had a popularity primarily based on his far-right, anti-gay views.
Woodward, who saved a “hate diary” by which he bragged of pranking and scary homosexual males, had dropped out of faculty and was dwelling together with his mother and father. Bernstein, an overtly homosexual College of Pennsylvania scholar, was staying together with his mother and father over winter break in Lake Forest.
Woodward prompt he was bi-curious. Bernstein texted his tackle. Woodward picked him up, and so they went to a close-by park.
“Sadly for Blaze, curiosity killed him,” Walker stated.
Taking the stand in his personal protection, Woodward appeared almost catatonic, his phrases halting and sluggish, his eyes solid downward, his face lined by a curtain of unkempt hair. His lawyer needed to maintain reminding him to search for.
Woodward testified that he took two puffs on a powerful marijuana joint, went right into a haze and got here out of it to search out Bernstein touching his genitals.
By Woodward’s account, Bernstein instructed him he had been outed, referred to as him a hypocrite and stated one thing like, “I received you.” Woodward stated he feared that Bernstein had taken a photograph of his genitals and was texting it to somebody.
Requested for particulars in regards to the stabbing, Woodward repeatedly stated he couldn’t bear in mind.
Bernstein’s blood was discovered on the knife bearing Woodward’s father’s identify, main prosecutors to conclude it was the homicide weapon. However Woodward insisted he had used a unique knife.
No proof surfaced that Bernstein took specific images of Woodward, and Walker, the prosecutor, referred to as the defendant’s account “ridiculous” and “revisionist historical past.”
Deriding the notion that Woodward flew right into a rage for worry of being outed, she stated he had posted his personal picture on a Tinder profile saying he was in search of different males and had despatched out images of his penis greater than as soon as.
She stated that “taking a weapon together with your dad’s identify may be very symbolic,” significantly since Woodward, an Eagle Scout, had a number of knives. The prosecutor stated that by killing Bernstein, Woodward hoped to lift his profile with the Atomwaffen Division.
“It should show to Atomwaffen he’s not homosexual,” Walker stated. “It should show to his dad he’s not homosexual. It should show to himself he’s not homosexual.”
When police searched Woodward’s belongings, they discovered a dying’s-head masks — an emblem of the Atomwaffen — spattered with Bernstein’s blood, indicating Woodward had it with him through the stabbing.
“Why are you bringing a cranium masks?” Walker stated. “This can be a ceremonial killing for him that’s going to get him status and admiration, which it did. We heard Atomwaffen was happy with him for this.”
Woodward buried Bernstein in a shallow grave within the park, and, to divert investigators, despatched texts to Bernstein’s cellphone asking the place he was. Woodward’s preliminary account to police was that he had accompanied Bernstein to the park however that Bernstein had inexplicably wandered off.
After a weeklong search, Bernstein’s physique was discovered when the rain washed away grime concealing his physique. No shovel was discovered. Filth was found underneath Woodward’s fingernails, nevertheless, and Morrison stated he had dug the makeshift grave together with his arms, an argument that it was not a premeditated crime.
Morrison painted his shopper as a socially awkward younger man who suffered for years with undiagnosed autism. He stated there was no proof that Woodward had really pranked and terrorized homosexual males past the account in his “hate diary,” which Morrison characterised as empty boasting.
Morrison denied that Bernstein’s deadly stabbing was “a hate-fueled crime impressed by the likes of Hitler and [Charles] Manson.” He attributed his shopper’s attachment to the Atomwaffen Division to “his lifelong battle to slot in, to make and keep significant friendships,” which left him susceptible to a gaggle that provided fellowship and preyed on folks like him. He stated his shopper had a “hunger for human connection.”
Jurors will resume deliberations Wednesday morning. Woodward faces life in jail if convicted as charged.
