[ad_1]
Blaze Bernstein had been lacking every week when investigators discovered his physique buried below a skinny layer of mud at Borrego Park in Lake Forest in January 2018, with 19 stab wounds to his neck.
A 19-year-old scholar on the College of Pennsylvania, the place he was the managing editor of Penn Appetit, a student-run meals journal, he had come dwelling to spend the vacations along with his household in Orange County.
Suspicion quickly fell on 20-year-old Samuel Woodward, Bernstein’s former schoolmate on the Orange County College of the Arts, who had admitted to being with him within the park the night time he disappeared. Investigators mentioned they discovered Bernstein’s blood on a visor in Woodward’s automotive, and on a knife found in a drawer on the Newport Seashore dwelling the place Woodward lived along with his dad and mom.
Bernstein was Jewish and homosexual, whereas Woodward, in response to one in every of his attorneys, was conflicted about his sexuality. When investigators managed to hack into Woodward’s iPhone, they unearthed a trove of anti-gay, anti-Jewish materials linked to the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist hate group.
The position that ideology might have performed in Bernstein’s loss of life can be sharply contested at his trial, with opening statements anticipated to start Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court docket. Woodward is charged with homicide, with enhancements to be used of a lethal weapon and for hate crime, which may put him in jail for all times with out parole.
“There may be this narrative that’s been pushed: Nazi kills homosexual Jew. From the protection perspective, that’s inaccurate,” Assistant Public Defender Kenneth Morrison advised Choose Kimberly Menninger throughout one in every of many hearings main as much as the trial.
The precise protection technique stays unclear, however one in every of Morrison’s goals can be to decouple his consumer’s alleged crimes from his consumer’s affiliation with the Atomwaffen Division. The legal professional has argued, with little success, to have references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis excluded from testimony on the premise that they’re inflammatory.
The case has drawn widespread media curiosity, and Morrison objected to the opportunity of video cameras within the courtroom, which “actually could possibly be traumatizing” to a number of the 56 individuals on his witness listing, a few of whom are reluctant to testify.
“Is it just because the information media loves the salacious narrative that they created?” Morrison mentioned, including that in a fraught political local weather, publicity poses a “larger danger of prejudice for Mr. Woodward.”
Menninger, the choose, mentioned the trial entails “nice problems with public curiosity,” together with “homicide, sexual orientation, gender and faith.” She mentioned she would enable cameras on a restricted foundation, partially as a result of transparency would serve the protection of the courthouse.
“I have to be positive individuals belief us,” Menninger mentioned. “I would like them to see that we aren’t hiding the ball.”
In line with testimony at a preliminary listening to in September 2018, the Orange County Sheriff’s Division labored diligently to crack open the contents of Woodward’s iPhone. An investigator carried the telephone by hand to New Jersey, the place a telecommunications firm known as Cellebrite Inc. labored for 10 weeks to seek out the PIN code, bypassing the auto-shutdown operate.
On Woodward’s telephone, investigators discovered an abundance of Atomwaffen-related materials, together with a photograph of Woodward with James Mason, the writer of “Siege,” which a prosecutor described as “the Bible” of the hate group.
In line with Sheriff’s Division testimony, the telephone additionally contained emails Woodward wrote and despatched to himself below the heading “Sam’s Diary.” One e mail from Could 2017 mentioned:
“I inform sodomites that I’m bi-curious, which makes them need to ‘convert’ me … Get them hooked by appearing coy, possibly ship them a pic or two, beat across the bush and faux to inform them that I like them after which kabam, I both un-friend them or inform them they’ve been pranked, ha ha.”
In one other, from July 2017, he wrote that he had downloaded the courting app Grindr and was amusing himself by threatening homosexual individuals.
“LMAO,” he wrote, in response to testimony. “They suppose they’ll get hate crimed and it scares the s— out of them … Priceless.”
In line with investigators, Woodward acknowledged assembly Bernstein on the night time he vanished however asserted that Bernstein walked alone into the park and left him ready, uncertain “if Blaze was pranking him.”
Woodward additionally mentioned that Bernstein had made a go at him, an investigator testified, however Woodward discovered homosexuality “gross.” Requested about “quite a few cuts and scrapes” on his arms, Woodward mentioned he acquired them in a combat membership, in response to testimony within the preliminary listening to.
Six years after the killing, jury choice started in late February. A courtroom outburst by Woodward pressured the method to begin over. Woodward’s prior legal professional mentioned his consumer had Asperger’s syndrome and was torn about his sexuality. The trial is anticipated to final by way of the top of June.
[ad_2]
Source link
