Samuel Woodward, the man charged with the 2018 homicide of his high school classmate and former Penn undergraduate student Blaze Bernstein, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a Nov. 15 hearing.
Woodward’s trial took place over the summer and centered on whether the murder of Bernstein, who was openly gay and Jewish, was a hate crime or voluntary manslaughter. On July 3, Woodward was convicted of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement.
The sentencing took place in an Orange County, Calif. courtroom without Woodward’s presence. Woodward’s defense and the judge presiding over the sentencing attributed his absence to an unspecified illness.
“With every hateful stab of his knife, Samuel Woodward stabbed at the very heart of our entire community,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a public statement after the sentencing. “To hate someone simply for who they are is a hate like no other. It targets our identity and our self-worth in an attempt to render us worthless.”
Spitzer thanked senior deputy district attorney Jennifer Walker — the prosecutor in the case — for her “never-ending pursuit of justice.”
“To lose my firstborn child, my dream for the future, my partner in fun, is the single worst thing that has ever happened to me,” Bernstein’s mother Jeanne Pepper said in a statement to the court. “He accomplished more than most people do in a full life, and for that we are grateful. Blaze, we did the best we could for you. We figured out who did this. We brought him to justice. We worked to make this world better.”
Assistant public defender Ken Morrison advocated for a 28 years-to-life sentence for Woodward, citing “key evidence” that allegedly was not introduced at the trial or sentencing hearing regarding the “behavior” or “prior acts” of Bernstein.
Bernstein was a College sophomore when he went missing in Orange County in January 2018 while visiting family over winter break. On Jan. 9, 2018, authorities found a body in Orange County’s Borrego Park that investigators identified as Bernstein's.
Woodward was charged with Bernstein’s murder on Jan. 17. In August 2018, the Orange County Sheriff's Department added a hate crime charge to the allegations against Woodward.
Woodward was a known member of an armed neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division, according to a ProPublica report that emerged after he was charged. The report stated that it had obtained photo evidence of Woodward attending an Atomwaffen meeting in Texas. One of the photos depicted Woodward in a mask hailing the Nazi salute.
“Every one of us has worth and meaning – and every one of us brings value to our collective table of who we all are and who we want to be as a community,” Spitzer added in his public statement. “The acceptance of hate by one of us is a condemnation of all of us because silence is what allows hate to flourish. Here in Orange County, there is no tolerance for hate.”
In an interview with The Advocate, Pepper expounded on the impact of the trial on the Bernstein family.
“I think the biggest impact this long wait has had on our family was that we constantly had to weigh everything against how it might affect the trial,” she said. “Even when I needed surgery, I had to ask, ‘How will this impact what’s happening six months or a year from now?’ Now, we’re no longer tethered to this person.”
She told The Advocate that the knowledge that Bernstein “was loved and how deeply he loved in return” keeps the darkness at bay for her.
“I want to shift the narrative,” Pepper told The Advocate. “We spend too much time glorifying the perpetrators of these crimes. Let’s focus on the people doing good. Blaze was one of those people.”
To carry on Bernstein’s memory, his family launched a kindness campaign called “Blaze It Forward.” In April 2019, English professor and Bernstein’s former academic advisor Jamie-Lee Josselyn dedicated her participation in the Blue Cross Broad Street Run to Bernstein’s legacy and the “Blaze It Forward” campaign.
Beaue Bernstein, Blaze Bernstein's sister and a College junior, wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the tragedy of Blaze’s death has “brought [her] to dark places” and left her “questioning humanity.”
“I still try my best to see the good in others, because I know that there are more people in this world who are like my brother than the person who took his life so viciously because, after 7 years, he has finally been brought to justice,” she wrote. “Although Blaze is not here, I think of him every day and dream of being even half as creative and loving as he was.”
Beaue encouraged community members to “Blaze it Forward” and “leave the world a better place than it was before you found it, and spend more time with your loved ones — you never know when it will be the last.”
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