The man accused of murdering a gay Jewish teen in Southern California is facing trial six years after the brutal stabbing murder.
Samuel Woodward, 26, has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and the hate crime that was tacked on over the death of Blaze Bernstein, 19, back in 2018.
The trial has taken more than half-a-decade to begin, primarily due to questions about Woodward’s mental fitness to stand trial.
Opening statements took place in a Southern California court room on Tuesday, two years after Woodward was deemed competent to stand trial in 2022.
Bernstein, a 19-year-old Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, was home visiting his family in Orange County in January of 2018, when he made plans to meet up with Woodward.
Woodward, then-20 and originally from Newport Beach, was, according to his defense team, mentally unstable and conflicted about his sexuality.
Samuel Woodward, originally new Newport Beach, has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys will argue that he is innocent both of the murder charge, and of the enhancement for a hate crime that was tacked on
Blaze Bernstein, a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania , was gay and Jewish. In January of 2018, he was home in Orange County visiting his family when he was killed
The suspect was also linked to a white supremacist group – Atomwaffen Division – and kept troves of anti-gay and anti-Semitic material on his cell phone, which investigators were able to hack.
In one journal entry of Woodward’s titled ‘diary of hate,’ he described threats he claims to have made against gay people online, according to a brief by the prosecution.
Leading up to the trial, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison told Judge Kimberly Menninger: ‘There is this narrative that’s been pushed: Nazi kills gay Jew. From the defense perspective, that’s inaccurate.’
The lead prosecutor said on Tuesday the state will argue Woodward ‘killed Blaze Bernstein because he was gay,’ not because he was Jewish.
Bernstein went missing after a trip to a park in Lake Forest with Woodward. The pair had both attended the Orange County School of the Arts and connected via Snapchat after matching on Tinder while Bernstein was home.
The teen’s parents later found his glasses, wallet, and credit cards in his bedroom after he missed a dentist appointment on January 3 and wasn’t responding to texts or calls.
Several days later, Bernstein’s body was discovered in a shallow grave at the park close to his parents’ home.
Authorities say Woodward picked Bernstein up from his parents’ house and later stabbed him some 20 times in the face and neck.
DNA evidence connected Woodward to the stabbing murder, a theory bolstered by the trove of anti-gay, anti-Jewish material found on his phone.
Woodward was arrested two days after a bloody blade was found in his room at his parents’ house in the upscale enclave of Newport Beach.
The case has taken years to come to trial because of questions about Woodward’s mental state and ability to stand trial. Multiple public defenders have quit on Woodward, and the lead prosecutor on the case at one point became a judge.
Bernstein’s body was discovered in a shallow grave at the park close to his parents’ home
Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 20, of Newport Beach, right, a suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, consults with his attorney in January, 2018
Bernstein went missing after a trip to a park in Lake Forest with Woodward. The pair had both attended the Orange County School of the Arts and connected via Snapchat while Bernstein was home
Blaze Bernstein’s parents read a statement at a press conference in front of the Orange County Sheriff’s department after their son’s body was found a week after he had disappeared from their family home
In late 2022, he was deemed competent. He has also gone through a number of defense attorneys, one of whom claimed Woodward has Asperger’s syndrome, which generally causes difficulty with social interactions.
In February, when the jury selection process began, a courtroom outburst from Woodward forced the process to begin again. The defendant reportedly threw a cup of water at Judge Menninger.
The Bernstein family has reportedly been frustrated with the trial delays. They hope that the beginning of the trial will get them one step closer to justice for their son’s killing.
Ahead of trial, Morrison said: ‘For the past six years, the public has been reading and hearing a prosecution and muckraking narrative about this case that is simply fundamentally wrong.’
‘I caution everyone to respect our judicial process and wait until a jury has been able to see, hear, and evaluate all of the evidence,’ he said.
The defense framed their strategy Tuesday around the notion that Blaze Bernstein was killed by Woofward ‘because of what Sam learned that night about what Blaze had been doing over the previous six months.’
The implication of the argument being that it was Bernstein who lured Woodward to the park that night, as opposed to the opposite, according to journalist Louis Keene, who has been watching the trial.
Morrison has also said that one of his primary goals will be to separate the crime his client is accused of committing from his association with the Atomwaffen Division.
Morrison has previously attempted to have references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis excluded from testimony during trial due to their inflammatory nature.
He has also said that, despite media interest, having cameras in the courtroom during the trial could ‘be traumatizing’ to some of the 56 witnesses slated to testify.
‘Is it simply because the news media loves the salacious narrative that they created?’ asked the public defender.
Judge Menninger, however, determined the trial involves ‘great issues of public interest.’ She will therefore allow cameras in the courtroom on a limited basis.
‘I need to be sure people trust us. I need them to see that we are not hiding the ball,’ she said.
The trial is expected to take two-to-three months, potentially running through the end of June.
Woodward has cycled through a handful of defense attorneys in the six years since his arrest
At a preliminary hearing back in 2018, the OC Sheriff’s Department worked hard to crack open the contents of Woodward’s iPhone.
Their successful efforts yielded a goldmine of suspicious material, including emails the young man had written and sent to himself under the heading ‘Sam’s Diary.’
‘I tell sodomites that I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to ‘convert’ me … Get them hooked by acting coy, maybe send them a pic or two, beat around the bush and pretend to tell them that I like them and then kabam, I either un-friend them or tell them they have been pranked, ha ha,’ he wrote in one such email dated May 2017.
In another email he sent from July 2017, Woodward wrote about downloading the gay dating app Grindr.
‘LMAO. They think they are going to get hate crimes and it scared the s*** out of them … Pricless.’
Investigators say that Woodward admitted to being with Bernstein on the night he vanished, but said the victim walked alone through the park, leaving him waiting.
Woodward also said that Bernstein made a pass at him, but the suspect believed homosexuality to be ‘gross.’
On Tuesday, the prosecution introduced new messages between Woodward and Bernstein, in which Woodward told Blaze he was still straight, but ‘I might make an exception for you.’