‘His last name was Bernstein’: Exchange over yarmulke brings antisemitism into focus in murder trial
Blaze Bernstein. Courtesy of Jeanne Pepper
By Louis Keene April 16, 2024
SANTA ANA, CALIF. – Any notion that Judaism would take a backseat in Samuel Woodward’s trial for the murder of Blaze Bernstein dissolved in five words, delivered with barely concealed contempt at the end of the trial’s third day.
“His last name was Bernstein.”
The words, from the victim’s father, won’t appear in the courtroom transcript. The judge struck them from the record. He said they didn’t answer to the question the defense attorney put to Gideon Bernstein — whether his son wore a yarmulke. But with Bernstein’s remark, a second front in the courtroom showdown opened: Was his son, whom the prosecution claims was stabbed to death because he was gay, also a victim of antisemitism?
The answer could have legal ramifications. Woodward, 26, has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and committing a hate crime. A guilty verdict on the latter would mean a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. And the prosecution only needs to prove one category of hate was a factor.
But according to Brian Levin, an expert on hate crime who founded the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, it is not as easy as establishing — as is the case in this trial — that the victim was Jewish and his killer was active in a neo-Nazi group.
“Bias doesn’t have to be the sole motivating factor” for a hate crime conviction, Levin said. “But it has to be one of them. And that has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”
Six years after Blaze Bernstein’s death at 19, and five days into the trial, much of the case appears settled. Woodward’s attorney conceded in his opening argument that his client — who had attended high school with Bernstein; the two matched on Tinder in June 2017 and again the night Blaze disappeared — had committed homicide. What is left to debate is the motive.
Tacking Jewish
At the trial’s outset, lead prosecutor Jennifer Walker introduced Woodward’s victim as “gay and Jewish.” But she framed the crime as an overtly anti-gay act. “The prey he had chosen was gay people,” Walker said of Woodward, arguing he studied them as such: “What do gays respond to? What do they like?”
Since then, however, Bernstein’s Jewish identity has gradually come to the fore as Walker bookended each Bernstein parent’s testimony with questions about their Jewish identity. The first thing she asked Jeanne Pepper, Blaze’s mother, was the family’s religion and race (“We are a Jewish family,” Pepper answered). And among the final questions she asked Gideon Bernstein were about Blaze’s involvement in Jewish community.
Before perhaps a dozen of their friends from Irvine’s University Synagogue in court to support them, their testimony painted a picture of a boy raised in a deeply Jewish household. The jury learned the family regularly attended synagogue on Shabbat and celebrated Jewish holidays; when Blaze was in high school, he served as a madrich, or counselor, for first graders in the synagogue’s religious school, which he had attended as a child.
With much of Walker’s opening statement oriented around Woodward’s alleged gay hatred, defense attorney Ken Morrison had attempted to refute the charge by focusing on Woodward’s internal conflict about his own sexuality and the repressive environment in which he grew up. Morrison shared that his client had sent nude images of himself in high school to a male classmate; meanwhile, Woodward’s father believed homosexuality was a sin and his older brother teased him relentlessly.
It seemed Morrison would let Bernstein’s religiosity go unchallenged in the parents’ cross-examination. But on April 11, in one of his last questions to Bernstein’s father, Morrison asked whether the family would attend Jewish events at the temple. Gideon Bernstein said yes.
Would Blaze wear a yarmulke to those events? Yes.
And at any other events in which Judaism would play a role, would he wear a yarmulke? Again the answer was yes, but by now Bernstein sensed where Morrison was headed.
“But beyond those types of activities or events, Blaze didn’t wear a yarmulke on a daily basis, did he?” Morrison asked.
“His last name was Bernstein,” Bernstein said. Judge Kim Menninger sustained Morrison’s objection, and Bernstein tried again: “He didn’t wear a yarmulke, but I think all his friends knew he was Jewish.” Again Morrison objected, and the words after “yarmulke” were struck from the record.
That concluded the cross-examination.
Intersectionality
Levin, the hate crime law expert, said that Woodward potentially being gay did not insulate him from charges of anti-gay hate. He pointed to internecine hate crime convictions in the Amish community as an example, and a Nazi skinhead in Florida who was Jewish.
A defense attorney could try to use their client’s inner turmoil to challenge the notion of bias, he said. But if there’s inner turmoil, there’s probably a degree of hatred fueling it.
“If someone’s supposedly conflicted, there’s obviously some kind of bias with regard to how they feel about possibly being gay,” Levin said.
Levin has been following the Bernstein case and characterized the evidence — Woodward’s membership in Atomwaffen Division, his virulently anti-gay writings and the neo-Nazi skull mask found with Bernstein’s DNA on it — as clear basis for hate crime charges.
Given the abundance of evidence that Bernstein was killed because he was gay, I asked Levin why the prosecution would try to assert that Bernstein’s Jewishness also made him a target. He noted that victims are often the members of more than one marginalized group — for example, transgender women of color. And if the jury buys Morrison’s defense on the anti-gay matter, the prosecution still has the victim’s Jewish identity as something of a backup motive.
Though Blaze Bernstein did not wear a yarmulke to class at Orange County School of the Arts, and the court reporter excised Gideon Bernstein’s pointed response, the jury might conclude that the assailant’s loyalty to Atomwaffen and his victim’s Jewish last name offer enough of a nexus.
“These kinds of hatreds also have intersectionality,” Levin said. “Someone can have dual motives or even motives where one amplifies the other. In that subculture, harming a gay person or harming a Jew is considered a badge of honor.”
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