Alienated, lonely and “starved for validation,” Samuel Woodward discovered a short sense of acceptance within the Atomwaffen Division, which preached America’s imminent collapse and consciously focused the ostracized and bullied for recruitment, Woodward’s legal professional mentioned Tuesday.
In his opening assertion at Woodward’s homicide trial, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison acknowledged that his shopper was liable for the demise of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, who was Jewish and homosexual. However regardless of Woodward’s affiliation with Atomwaffen, which is taken into account a hate group, the legal professional insisted Woodward was not pushed by bigotry and had not premeditated the killing.
“What occurred that evening, plain and easy, was not a hate crime,” Morrison instructed jurors in Orange County Superior Court docket in Santa Ana.
Woodward, 26, faces a cost of first diploma homicide with a hate crime enhancement for Bernstein’s demise. He’ll face life in jail if convicted as charged.
Bernstein, a scholar on the College of Pennsylvania, was dwelling together with his household for the vacations in Lake Forest when he disappeared on Jan. 2, 2018. Per week later, his physique was discovered below a skinny layer of earth in close by Borrego Park. He and Woodward had attended the Orange County Faculty of the Arts collectively.
“The ‘why’ is the one most vital situation you will want to resolve — not who,” Morrison mentioned. “Blaze Bernstein’s sexual orientation had completely nothing to do with the rationale he was killed. … [He] was not killed due to who he was however due to what he did to Sam Woodward after they met up.”
Morrison didn’t clarify what he meant about Bernstein’s actions. As a substitute, he painted an image of his shopper — who sat on the protection desk in a darkish go well with with unkempt darkish hair hanging over his face — as a socially awkward younger man who suffered for years with undiagnosed autism spectrum dysfunction and couldn’t make mates.
“His ASD went undiagnosed and untreated for nearly his total life,” Morrison mentioned. Woodward’s dad and mom “needed so badly for Sam to seem regular and match” and thought maybe “by power of will and prayer, they may assist him seem regular.”
Woodward thrived as an Eagle Scout however was suffering from his sexuality, raised in Newport Seaside in an “unaccepting family” by a conservative Catholic household, with a father who thought of homosexuality a sin, the protection legal professional mentioned.
After briefly attending Cal State Channel Islands, Woodward moved again in together with his dad and mom. He grew to become concerned within the Atomwaffen Division, touring to a “hate camp” the group hosted in Texas and posing for a photograph with James Mason, writer of “Siege,” thought to be the group’s bible.
Disputing what he referred to as the prosecution’s “hyperbolic, sensationalized” narrative of “Nazi kills homosexual Jew,” the protection legal professional mentioned Woodward didn’t kill Bernstein in service of the group or its ideology.
Assistant Dist. Atty. Jennifer Walker instructed jurors that Woodward was so concerned within the Atomwaffen Division that he devised assessments for potential recruits to check their information of its doctrines, and that he had killed Bernstein “as a result of he was homosexual.”
On Dec. 19, two weeks earlier than the killing, Woodward drew a cranium and a bloody knife on a serviette and scrawled the phrases “textual content is boring however homicide isn’t,” the prosecutor mentioned.
Woodward’s diary confirmed that he favored to prank homosexual folks on social media by pretending he was bicurious, attracting their consideration after which threatening them. The prosecutor mentioned Woodward utilized the ideas of his Eagle Scout coaching to concentrating on Bernstein.
“If it’s fishing, what sort of lure are you going to make use of?” Walker mentioned. On this case, “the prey … was homosexual folks.”
The boys exchanged flirtatious messages on Jan. 2. Woodward mentioned that though he was straight, “I’d make an exception for you.” Woodward picked him up in Foothill Ranch quickly after, and Bernstein’s dad and mom grew to become alarmed when he missed a dental appointment the following day.
When the dad and mom reached Woodward, alerted by their son’s social media exercise that Woodward was in all probability the final to have seen him, Woodward mentioned that he had frolicked with Bernstein however that Bernstein had walked off into the park with out him.
On Jan. 4, Woodward texted Bernstein’s father: “Mr. Bernstein, it’s Sam — has there been any phrase about Blaze?” The daddy replied, “Thanks Sam. We’re nonetheless on the lookout for him.”
Investigators searched the park for every week, however Bernstein’s physique was not found till heavy rains washed away simply sufficient mud to show him. He had 28 stab wounds, Walker instructed jurors, lots of them to his neck, with defensive wounds on his palms. “Blaze fought for his life as finest he might,” she mentioned.
Sheriff’s investigators later discovered Bernstein’s blood on Woodward’s watch, on a folding knife found in his desk and on a sleeping bag stashed beside his home. As well as, Woodward’s cellphone pings confirmed him transferring across the space of the burial simply earlier than midnight on Jan. 2.
Morrison had not completed his opening assertion by the top of court docket Tuesday. He mentioned he expects to place Woodward on the stand. The trial will resume Wednesday and is predicted to final until the top of June.
