Full court trial ordered over Blaze murder
THERE IS sufficient evidence for Jewish student Blaze Bernstein’s suspected killer to stand trial, a judge has ruled.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Karen Robinson said at the end of a preliminary hearing on Tuesday that the case of 21-yearold Samuel Woodward can proceed.
Mr Woodward is accused of stabbing Mr Bernstein 19 times in his neck in what prosecutors say illustrated his suspected homophobia and ties to the Atomwaffen Divison, an armed fascist group in California.
The OC Register reported Mr Bernstein’s autopsy found he had been stabbed
19 times in the neck and had suffered apparently defensive wounds to his right palm and to several fingers.
Prosecutors said there were also more than 100 “materials” on Mr Woodward’s iPhone referencing the Atomwaffen Division, including a wallpaper and pictures referencing Nazism.
He reportedly told officers that he picked up Mr Bernstein from his home at 11pm on January 2 this year and drove to a local park, where they were alone.
Officers searching Mr Woodward’s home found a knife in a bedroom drawer with blood on the tip of the blade and the handle, as well as blood stains at various locations including the visor of his car.
His lawyer Edward Muñoz earlier said his client has asperger syndrome, a developmental disorder that often causes people to struggle with social interaction and nonverbal communication.
He added: “He has a lot of issues, I think, around sexual orientation.” In June, Mr Bernstein’s mother Jeanne Pepper wrote for the JC about how she and her husband turned to tikun olam, “the practice of loving people and of repairing our world”, after their son’s death.
Mr Woodward will return to court for a further hearing on September 17. Samuel Woodward