Jurors deliberated about 8 hours before delivering their verdict
Samuel Woodward brushes away the hair from his face after his attorney Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison asked him to do so during his testimony in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday, June 13, 2024 in Santa Ana. Woodward is accused of stabbing his former Orange County School of the Arts classmate Blaze Bernstein to death more than six years ago and burying his body near a Foothill Ranch park.
Bernstein enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a pre-med student. Woodward dropped out after less than a year at Cal State Channel Islands, moved to Texas to meet up with members of Atomwaffen Division, the Neo-Nazi hate group, and then moved back in with his parents in Newport Beach.
In June 2017, Bernstein ran across a Tinder profile Woodward had created, according to online conversations shown during the trial, and was shocked to see that his conservative former classmate seemed to be searching for other men. Woodward, in messages to Bernstein, was at times defensive and at times seemingly flirtatious. But the conversation ended with Bernstein saying he couldn’t meet up, and Woodward responding by denying he was gay.
Woodward, during testimony, claimed he was looking for someone to hang out with. The prosecution argued that Woodward led Bernstein to believe they were going to “hook up.” Woodward testified that he went into a “state of terror” and asked what he was doing. He said Bernstein responded by saying “calm down. … It’s not a big deal. … I got you, you hypocrite,” and he may have used the word “outed.”
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